Hello,
This article addresses these issues by providing essential Facebook image guidelines, helping you create visuals that not only meet platform specifications but also captivate your audience and drive meaningful interactions.
Contents
Recommended Image Sizes
How to go Viral
Stop The Scroll
The first and most important thing any post needs to do in order to go viral is to “Stop The Scroll”.
We have all been there, endlessly scrolling through our social media feeds until something grabs our attention, and we stop, even if only for a few seconds. This is stopping the scroll, and it is the first step to a successful post.
How To Stop The Scroll
The simplest way to describe photos that stop the scroll is this “WTF Images”.
Now, what do I mean by this? Well, simply, any image that makes you go WTF?
This could be numerous things; it could simply just be a strange image, you might be puzzled by what the person is doing, you might think the person is doing something wrong and you can't wait to correct them in the comments, it might simply be a photo of something so beautiful that you can't help but be amazed.
Let Me Show You
Here I will show you two posts from my website, they both link to the same article. One completely flopped, and one is the most successful post I have ever had.
The first image completely flopped and got almost zero clicks, the second image drove over 250,000 clicks to my website in a single month!
The second image is high contrast, original, has a pop of colour and shows me doing something strange (trust me, it's strange if you are into gardening!)
People see the image and stop for a second, “Hang on, why is that guy chopping a tomato leaf in half”. And that's it, in that moment's hesitation I stopped the scroll and now this user is much more likely to click through and see what is going on.
People just scroll past the top image without giving it a second glance.
Colour – Contrast – Vibrance
When it comes to stopping someone from scrolling through their feed then, bright colours, strong contrast, and a vibrant image can help a lot.
Which image is more likely to catch your attention as you are scrolling past at 200mph?
This may not seem like a large step, but going through all my images and giving them a little contrast, vibrancy, and saturation buff is something I do before posting.
Farm Engagement
You can do this in many ways, but ensure you keep it sustainable.
Outrage farms engagement, but if all you are doing is p****g off your audience, then they will soon leave.
Open-ended questions are a great way of farming engagement. If you know your niche and ask the right questions, then people will go straight into the comments to add their opinions.
Reply and promote discussion, and before you know it, you have a viral post on your hands.
But how do you turn this into traffic?
The Engagement Post Hack
I'm sure you are familiar with the plain text on a bright background post on Facebook, usually asking a question. These get tonnes of engagement, but there is no way, apart from a comment link, to get people back to your site.
So, we get a little cheeky and create a link post with an image mimicking this style.
People see this, read the text and comment below with their own opinions. But the whole thing is a link post, and it links to a related article on my website.
The engagement you get increases your reach tremendously, and as it is a link post – you get plenty of traffic!
Conclusion
By adhering to Facebook's image specifications and employing strategies like enhancing color contrast, using vibrant visuals, and crafting engaging content, you can significantly improve your posts' performance.
Remember, the goal is to ‘stop the scroll'—to make users pause and engage with your content. Implementing these guidelines will help transform your Facebook presence, turning passive scrollers into active participants and driving more traffic to your site.