Make a bigger impact with the right images

byNelson35a

450 followers

Updated 9 years ago

It’s been a while since I posted anything here but thought I would let you know about an experiment I did recently using Facebook Ads to promote two posts I had created on my website. The results were very interesting and I believe mostly down to the different images I used as the featured image in each post.

The two posts are part of a series of articles I have been writing on “Travel Accessories Must Haves”. One post contained reviews of travel tech gadgets and the other one contained reviews of accessories for travel comfort. I had recently published each finished article onto my website and then shortly afterwards created a post on my Facebook page for each one. Facebook gives you the option to boost a post and the cost is fairly cheap. I had boosted a post previously as a trial so I knew roughly what to expect. I’m in the UK so the cost is in GB pounds - £3 per post per day and I ran the ads for 3 days. So that is 2 ads boosted x £3 per day x 3 days each = £18. For that cost Facebook puts your post (ad) in front of a few thousand people (they call it “reach”). I think the minimum cost is £6 and a minimum of one day boosting, but you can also spend a lot more per day and promote the post for a greater number of days. The choice is yours.

Below are the two different images. Just to be clear I used the same image for the featured image on the website article and the corresponding Facebook post.

The Travel Tech Gadgets post had a featured image that tried to depict what the content of the article was about, i.e tech gadgets that people use when travelling.

The Accessories for Travel Comfort post had a featured image that was a bit more abstract showing a bull dog sleeping in a very hard looking wooden chair. This appeals more to the user’s imagination in that they can imagine themselves trying to get comfortable in the cramped space of an airplane, train or bus. Animals also appeal to human emotion so relevant images are great to use if you can find one or make your own.

The results from the two posts boosted on Facebook:

Travel Tech Gadgets post

• -2348 people reached
• -18 people ‘Liked’ the post on my FB page

Accessories for Travel Comfort post

• -3781 people reached
• -66 people ‘Liked’ the post on my FB page
• -3 people shared the post

I am not sure how Facebook gets the advert in front of more people to achieve greater reach but I suspect it is to do with the more a post is liked the more people FB will push the advert out to. Any one got any other ideas on this? There was no difference at all between the audiences I had set up for the two posts.

The titles and the text for each post were quite similar and both contained the “Travel Accessories Must Haves - .....” keyword, then the sub keyword after the hyphen.

So the conclusion for me in which post achieved the greatest interaction and engagement is down to the image. Use of relevant images that promote greater interaction and engagement with your users applies to all social media platforms, not just Facebook.

Have a nice day!! J

Neil