A study has revealed that Facebook posts with images got the highest click-through rates and organic results. Paid ads with images attracted the highest engagement, compared to other updates such as links, questions or offers. This is according to research by marketing company ShopIgniter.
ShopIgniter studied over 2,000 Facebook news feed posts, organic and paid post performance. Results show that posts with photos attracted a higher click-through rate, while sponsored posts with questions registered the highest click-through rate and viral reach.
In terms of engagement, posts with images received an average of 5.8% engagement per user, which is more than 1% higher than Facebook Offers – the next best performing organic post with 4.19%.
Posts that prompted negative feedback are commonly those which the user hides or reports as a spam message. Results from the study show that the notes feature on Facebook got the worst results in terms of organic reach, along with sponsored links.
Paid notes saw over -4.5% negative feedback per user, while organic negative feedback almost reached -2.5%. The negative feedback rate for links on the organic side topped -4.3%, with paid links getting almost -1% negative feedback.
ShopIgniter points out that imagery drives more native clicks and maximises the reach. Calls to action, such as “tap to open” or “expand”, in all posts also improve engagement, while friends and fans tend to drive sharing, and paid media can boost the impact. Facebook allows great targeting, so marketers should learn how to use unpublished posts to segment, whilst making sure it’s not harming the reach; the social network needs reach to drive user conversion.