Facebook has become an integral part of many creative businesses’ marketing strategies and central to many of these plans is spreading the word about how awesome your photography is by sharing images. Since Google+ was launched and was such a hit with photographers, Facebook has been trying to smarten up the way they work with images in your news feed. One of the changes they have made this year is in the way they display your post when you have just uploaded multiple images or a new gallery. I’ve posted this quick 4-image gallery from my recent testing of the new Canon 200-400 lens as an example.
For the most part, people are simply used to seeing a single image post in their feed so when they see multiple images in this way it jolts them into paying more attention and clicking through to view the images on the right-hand side in their entirety. Facebook has slightly different display layouts depending on how many images you post but if you want to use this method I would suggest no less than 4 images and no more than 10. Just as with a website portfolio, having large numbers of images is pointless when people have been trained to consume content on the internet today in bite-sized chunks. Better to have a small number of killer shots that get great engagement and commenting, than 30 shots where nobody views the last 20.
A further benefit of this method is that it also shows prospective clients that your image was not a flash in the pan or your one good shot from a day of shooting. The overall impression of your photography skill is greatly increased if people think you can create magic with every click!
The best time to post your Facebook photos and page updates are between 1 PM and 4 PM. Facebook’s traffic peaks at about 3 PM. Never post overnight between 8 PM and 8 AM unless you want your photos to be met with the sound of chirping crickets……
To take this concept even further and get people to engage with all the images in the collection you can tell a story through the captions of each image. Perhaps a story about your days shooting or the overall project for a past client. Begin the story in the first caption and continue the story throughout the rest of them, urging viewers to ‘click to the next image to continue reading’. Be sure to mark your captions 1 of 4, 2 of 4 etc. etc. just in case people join in the middle and explain that the story is told across the images by mentioning this in the album description.
Time to take action with your Facebook photos!
Give it a try, go to Facebook right now and upload 4 images from your latest shoot! Think carefully about which ones you choose though, they need to really stand out. Think that choosing four bright blue images for my example was just a coincidence? Think again!
