Photos are said to improve engagement on Facebook, but does that
engagement in turn boost traffic or fans? No, our testing found — but
there still might be value in using them.
Ever since Facebook started displaying Reach data directly on Facebook fan pages, here at Marketing Land and Search Engine Land we have been diligently watching the fluctuations happen day-to-day. Knowing that using photos is a sure way to attract a more engaged audience, we started to deliberately manually post more photos on Facebook, and not via our third-party tool. We spent about a week posting photos with links in the caption where it made sense – after all, we’re publishers, and our goal is to drive traffic to our sites.
Search Engine Land Facebook Campaign Traffic
Since there didn’t seem to be a blip anywhere on either site, I
looked at the top five photo posts and the top five link posts with most
reach. I did the same with Search Engine Land. Then I grabbed the top
ten Facebook posts from each site that drove the most traffic. What I
discovered was this:
Absolutely. Content consumption happens everywhere, and publishers need to be ready to have their content read and distributed outside of the confines of their site. And the broader audience, the better. Does it really matter whether your brand engages with you on your turf, or on a site they spend time on? And as you already likely know, the SEO benefits of social activity is there, and in light of all of the link building confusion happening these days, building a reliable, honest social presence will likely benefit long-term.
Ever since Facebook started displaying Reach data directly on Facebook fan pages, here at Marketing Land and Search Engine Land we have been diligently watching the fluctuations happen day-to-day. Knowing that using photos is a sure way to attract a more engaged audience, we started to deliberately manually post more photos on Facebook, and not via our third-party tool. We spent about a week posting photos with links in the caption where it made sense – after all, we’re publishers, and our goal is to drive traffic to our sites.
Photo Posts vs. Link Posts Performance
When we compared photo posts to link posts in a 30-day period in PageLever, one of the many tools we use, we realized immediate results:- 4x engaged users per post
- 4x the amount of shares
- 4x more consumption
- 4x as many shares
- Twice as many likes
- 2.5x more virality
Great news, right? Concrete actions with
concrete results. Lots of visibility, lots of engagement. With more
visibility, you can make the assumption that site traffic and followers
would see the benefit.
No Big Increase In Fan Growth
From the chart below you can see a bit of a peak in growth the week of July 9, which is when we started posting photos with links. But the Removed Fans metric also increased at that time, so it’s safe to say that there really hasn’t been any impact on Fan growth.How Was The Traffic?
As you can see below, despite the social success, there was not much to write home about.
Marketing Land Facebook Campaign TrafficSearch Engine Land Facebook Campaign Traffic
- For Marketing Land, six out of the ten top traffic-driving posts were links, not photos.
- For Search Engine Land, seven out of the ten top traffic-driving posts were links, not photos.
Absolutely. Content consumption happens everywhere, and publishers need to be ready to have their content read and distributed outside of the confines of their site. And the broader audience, the better. Does it really matter whether your brand engages with you on your turf, or on a site they spend time on? And as you already likely know, the SEO benefits of social activity is there, and in light of all of the link building confusion happening these days, building a reliable, honest social presence will likely benefit long-term.
