Increase my Facebook reach 6,000 percent? Sounds pretty impressive doesn’t it? I was impressed, and it wasn’t that difficult. It just took a bit of effort and thought on my side.

First a little background:

We publishing the One New Man Bible. This unique translation maintains the Bible’s original Hebrew perspective and the power of the Greek language the New Testament was written in. It’s like you’re reading the Bible with the understanding and context its original audience would have first heard. It’s a neat Bible.

But that’s not the story. Here’s the story:

Every day we publish “Word for the Day,” a scripture passage from the One New Man Bible on our Facebook page. We’ve been doing this for over a year now, and we get a few views and a few “Likes.” I saw the “Word for the Day” post on my Facebook news feed a while back and thought “blehh.” It was great scripture, but with all the other things on my Facebook feed does it really stick out enough to get noticed?

Here’s a sample:

24 people reached? Ouch!

 Not super eye-popping is it?

Check out the Facebook reach. That’s how many people Facebook shows it to. Almost 8,000 people “like” our page and Facebook thought our post was only good enough to show it to 24 of them – ouch!

Facebook wants its users to actually “like” the posts they see on their feed. If they don’t think a post is “likable” enough, they just won’t show it very many people.

What if we included a relevant image, a scripture reference so folks could look up the passage in their own Bibles and include a little thumbnail image of the One New Man Bible so people would associate the scripture and the cover?

It took a few minutes to find an image that matched the scripture and to layout the reference and the Bible thumbnail, but that was all. I created images to go with the next four “Word for the Day” posts and scheduled them.

I didn’t think about it again for a week, but then I checked back in our Facebook feed to see how well the “Word for the Day” posts with pictures did vs. those without.

Wow!

1657 people reached. Wow!

My Facebook reach increased to 1,657 people just by adding a thoughtful image! That’s 1633 (sixty-nine times or 6904%) more people than the post without the image!

I checked the other posts, it was the same  – posts with images spectacularly outperformed posts with no images.

28 people reached. That sucks.

37 people reached. Depressing …

1684 people reached. I think we’re on to something!

1,709 people reached. “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag!”

Needless to say, each new “Word for the Day” now includes a meaningful, relevant image.

Here are some tips for increase your Facebook reach by adding images to your posts:

1. Make sure the image is relevant to the post and meaningful to the viewer. A “cute kitten” image attached to a post about global warming isn’t relevant. And slapping an image of your book cover on every post isn’t meaningful (trust me, I’ve got experience). This is about the viewer’s experience and Facebook is really, really good at what makes a good viewer experience.
2. Don’t steal images off the Internet without permission. I use a paid royalty free image service, Bigstockphoto.com, but the are sites that provide royalty free images for free. Here’s a good article on free image resources. 
3. Facebook’s current favorite size for news feed images is 470 x 394 pixels. I resize and add text and thumbnails to images in Photoshop, but there are some good free online photo editors out there like PicMonkey.
4. Add a thumbnail of your book cover if it’s relevant to the post. You want people to associate your book quotes or reviews with the book.
5. Include the url (web address) for your book or ministry if it’s relevant to the post. If your post has touched the viewer, they’ll want some direction on where to go next. If it’s not relevant, including your url can hurt the user experience, remember, it’s all about who’s viewing your post, not about advertising your book.

Do you have any experiences with Facebook posts that have worked out really well? Any that have blown up in your face? I’d love to hear about them. Please share in the comment section below.