Adobe Report: Focus On Photos, Video & Posting On Fridays For Better Facebook Results

We’ve already posted on the top headline from this week’s Adobe’s Social Intelligence Report — that Facebook advertising continues to crank along, but the report also details some interesting information about organic marketing on the dominant social network. In the wake of reduced organic reach for Facebook pages, marketers are adjusting their tactics and in […]

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We’ve already posted on the top headline from this week’s Adobe’s Social Intelligence Report — that Facebook advertising continues to crank along, but the report also details some interesting information about organic marketing on the dominant social network.

In the wake of reduced organic reach for Facebook pages, marketers are adjusting their tactics and in many cases spending more on advertising, which was made clear in Facebook’s first quarter earnings report also released this week that showed a thriving advertising business ($2.27 billion in advertising revenue, 82% higher than the first quarter of 2013).

Despite the advertising push, marketers haven’t given up on Facebook as a organic marketing tool and the Adobe report — based on aggregated and anonymous consumer data pulled from customers using the Adobe Social, Adobe Media Optimizer and Adobe Analytics products — gives indications about what is working.

Thinking Visually

For one thing, image posts remain the overwhelming choice, with 63% of brand posts featuring an uploaded photo. That’s down 2% YoY. The share of link posts — which Facebook signaled would be favored by the algorithm changes — increased 77% to 16% of the total, video posts went from 8% to 12% of the total and text posts dropped from 18% to 9%.

Photo posts were most effective at sparking engagement, but video is making inroads. The average image post in the first quarter received a 4.4% engagement rate (based on likes, shares and comments), compared to 3% for video. Engagement on video posts is growing fast, increasing 25% YoY and 58% QoQ. The engagement rate for link and text posts fell to 1.4% and 0.6%, respectively.

Facebook has been pushing video, implementing autoplay for News Feed videos on both mobile and desktop in December, which likely explains the huge gains in video plays — 785% YoY, 134% QoQ — Adobe found. And the increasing video engagement rate is a strong indication that most Facebook users aren’t tuning them out.

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Targeting Fridays

Adobe also found that brands were getting the most impressions and engagement on posts on Fridays. The 15.7% impression percentage for Friday beat runner-up Thursday (14.5%) by more than a percentage point. Further, more consumers commented (17%), liked (16%) and shared (16%) on posts made on Friday. And nearly, 25% of all video plays occur on Friday.

Download the full report here (PDF).


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Martin Beck
Contributor
Martin Beck was Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter from March 2014 through December 2015.

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