Discover and Create Great Visual Content for Facebook by Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick
I find using Facebook very frustrating. And I feel like I am losing the Facebook game, but I intend to turn things around. I have mentioned before that I am not getting the results that many are getting, which is to find clients through social media platforms. I have listened to many webinars on how to use the different social media platforms, and took great notes. For Facebook, I have tried the tactics that the experts recommend, but nothing works. Several say that people love quotes because they are inspiring, so I provided quotes on my Facebook fan page, but do not get much traction. I listened to the webinar “How to Discover and Create Great Visual Content for Facebook” that Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick hosted, and I was reminded that Context is King. Yes, fans like quotes because they inspire and motivate, but they also want to know why you are sharing specific quotes with them. Why are the quotes you share significant to you?
I have been using Hootsuite to schedule the updates for my Facebook fan page, and when you do that, you are forced to write the update that goes with the link to that specific social media platform. In the last week or so, I have written the context every now and again without being intentional about it. I have information on how much updates to share for each major social media platform, and a couple of the experts provided information on the type of content to share, which aligns with what Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick said on the webinar. I must have listened to seven social media webinars by now, one or two of the speakers have mentioned context, but didn’t explain what they meant by that. Could this be the piece of the missing puzzle of creating viral content? To be honest, I really don’t know, but I am willing to try. However, I have no intention of simply waiting to learn about virality from social media experts. As some of you may know already, I recently read Contagious
, which gave me insights into how ideas spread. I have almost finished reading Hooked
. I will read Social Physics
next, then I will combine the big ideas from the three books.
Did you know that content with great visuals had 94 percent more views? And posts with photos received 87 percent of total interaction.
Further Reading
The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki & Peg Fitzpatrick, Book Review
3 Ps of Facebook Success for Visual Content
- Personal: These types of posts do well on Facebook because people get a glimpse of the people behind the brand, so share photos of employees working, having fun, and so on. You want your fans to know that you are human, and you want them to get to know you and how you work.
- Purpose: You must have a reason for sharing every visual content on Facebook. What value is the content bringing to your fans?
- Promotion: You are a company, so your fans expect that at some point you will market to them, but make sure that your promotional content is educational. Use informative webinars, infographics, your latest e-book and so on.
One of the ways to succeed on Facebook is to master the role of creator and curator. This means that you learn how to create great content, and curate other content to extract the best. Before you start doing that, it’s important to understand how you are doing on Facebook. I know that I need a lot of help.
Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick referred to two tools that they use frequently.
- Likealyzer: I checked out this tool and it analyzes your Facebook fan page, then gives you ideas on how to increase engagement. Using Likealyzer, I started watching some of the brands they suggested, and I shared some of the articles they recommended. So far, I like this tool, and I will continue to use it.
- Facebook Search: This is an app that you add to your browser to search Facebook using a variety of criteria. I quickly tested it, but I have to spend some time figuring out how best to use the tool to help me increase engagement on Facebook.
Study the Traits of Highly Shareable Content
Some brands are doing incredibly well on Facebook, why? You want to study content that gets shared a lot to learn from them. You do not want to copy them, but use their content to inspire you, to give you ideas on what kinds of content to share on Facebook. Below are some of the traits of highly shareable content on Facebook.
- Unique: What kind of visual content is unique that would be interesting to your fans?
- On Brand: The content that you share on Facebook has to align with your brand – everything has to look great. When you share a piece of visual content, your fans should be able to immediately tell that it’s coming from you because they recognize your brand. When I create an image, I have my website URL on it. I used to use my logo, but it took up too much space, and I also noticed that most big brands simply used their URL.
- Correctly Sized: I use Canva, BeFunky and Fotojet to create my images for social media. Canva and Fotoject already have a template for Facebook post images, so you do not have to worry about sizing.
- Includes a Call to Action: What do you want the reader to do after viewing your visual content? This is something that I am not very good at, so I have to work on it. Fans like questions and quizzes.
- Motivates and Inspires: Quotes seem to do very well on Facebook. I have heard this from many Facebook experts. As I mentioned before, until now, no one explained exactly what they do when they post quotes on Facebook, all they do is show the staggering number of shares that they receive for their quotes. Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick explained that when you use a visual image of a quote, you have to explain to your fans why the quote is important to you, why does it align with your brand. Context is very Important and Context is Everything.
Where to Discover Great Visual Content to Share
- You need to know what your goal is for using Facebook, then look at companies that are doing an excellent job of sharing great content that’s good for your audience, then share it with them. Remember to add the context, so your fans understand why you are sharing the content.
- Use Facebook Graph to find Pages to Watch. Check out what content is working for these pages, then use it to inspire you to create content with those traits. If the pages have content that’s relevant to your audience, share it with your fans.
- There are some websites that have unique and interesting content that’s relevant to my fans, so I add their RSS feeds to Feedly, so I can quickly scan content, deciding what I’d like to share with my fans. Recently, I have also started to use Feedspot as well.
Tools to Create Great Visual Content
Rebekah Radice and Peg Fitzpatrick mentioned a few tools to help you easily create great visual content.
- Canva
- Relay
- Wordswag
- Over
- Flipagram
- Video
- Vine
- Periscope
- Meerkat
- Blab
- iMovie
- Cinematic
- Replay
- GIFs on Phhhhoto
- Infographics
- Canva
- PiktoChart
- GoodLabs
- Where to Find Affordable Photos
- Dollar Photo
- Freepik
- Morgue File
- Unsplash
These are a lot of tools, many of which I have never heard of before, so that’s good information to have. In addition to Canva, I also use BeFunky and Fotojet. I find that Canva often freezes, so it’s sometimes very frustrating to use. It does have a lot of functionalities that I like though, and love to use when it’s not freezing. I struggle with infographics and am not satisfied with the ones I have created so far.
In a blab that Kim Garst hosted, I learned about Legend that I now use all the time to create GIFs and videos that I post on Facebook and Instagram. Yesterday, I downloaded PicFrame, Quick and Flipagram for Android. I have experimented with PicFrame and Quick and I like them, haven’t gotten around to using Flipagram yet. Flipagram allows you to create quick videos with photos and music. Think about what will add value over time on Facebook.
For free photos, I use Pixabay a lot, but I make changes to the photos, so they look different. Before you use an image, make sure that you can use it legally and that you do not infringe on someone’s copyright.
Related Post
95+ Places to Find Images for Every Small Business Need
How To Attract An Audience With The Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Free Images)
8 Great Sites To Get Free Images For Your Blog
Social Selling, Visual Content, Social Media Tips and Other Musings: I wrote this article based on a really great blab that I attended.
20 Instagram Apps to Take Graphics from Good to GREAT: I saw this article on Twitter and I am glad that I read it because it mentions some really great apps. Unfortunately, several of the apps are for iOS only and I use Android.
4 Ways to Tell Your Story Visually
- Share quotes from evergreen content.
- Use client testimonials.
- Promote an upcoming event.
- Share your wisdom through tips and how-tos.
What I loved about the points Rebecca and Peg made about telling your story visually are the examples that they provided. Another important tip I learned from Sarah Arrow, is that when I am creating an image to go with my blog post, it should include the title of the post, my personal brand (https://theinvisiblementor.com), as well as a quote from the post attributed to me. I am telling my story visually, as well as building my personal brand. After listening to this webinar, based on the idea of sharing your wisdom, I started creating tips on how to read more books. The idea would not have come to me had I not listened to this webinar. I do have a lot of knowledge on how to read more books, and sharing my wisdom is a benefit to my fan base. Thank you Rebecca and Peg!
How to Attract the Right Fans with Visual Content
- People love eye-candy, so use visuals that pop, to grab attention.
- Use your Facebook cover photo as a visual cue for your Call-to-Action.
- Promote your workplace culture with your visual content.
- Encourage conversation: Share content that encourages conversation. Questions and quizzes are great.
- Be consistent with the look and feel of your brand.
- Cross-promote your content on a variety of social media platforms. Also promote using your email list, newsletter, website and blog.
