19 Jul 10 Examples of Visually Engaging Facebook Updates
The goal of any Facebook update for brands is to get as much engagement (Likes, Comments, and Shares) as humanly possible, or at least it should be. It’s a difficult task. People have short enough attention spans as it is – combine that with the competition present in a Facebook user’s news feed and getting them to interact with just a few short sentences, and engagement proves to be a monumental task.
Fortunately, there’s a bit of a “loophole” that some creative brands have found. Facebook allows you to post several kinds of updates, those being text, photos, links, videos, or a combination thereof. Well, what if you take the engaging status update you’ve written and turn it into a picture? Confused about what I mean? Scroll down to view some examples.
Fanta
We begin with Fanta, the upbeat soft drink brand with the infectious jingle. What they’ve done is take a simple question: Would you rather dive into a pool or perform a cannonball? This post really has nothing to do with the product itself and is a essentially a blatant play for engagement. But it’s very in tune with the bright, summery image the brand portrays. They also posted it in the middle of summer when people have pools and beaches on their mind. Such an image is likely to pique a fan’s interest when they see it in their newsfeed. They also used a little bit of text to complement the image and elicit responses.
Disney
Simple and brilliant, Disney forgoes any use of regular text with this fill in the blank post. It would have been a fantastic status update on its own (I mean, who wouldn’t want to spend a day with a Disney character?), but turning it into a picture was a stroke of genius. Not only does the solid blue square pop, but the Disney logo is included without it being forced or tacky. This serves as an excellent template if you’re looking for something to pattern your own creative status update after.
Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A is also quite adept at visual status updates, as seen in this trivia post. Including a picture of a delicious chicken sandwich never hurts.
The brand also used this type of update to bring awareness to their Cow Appreciation Day promotion.
Here, Chick-fil-A shows how you can get even more creative with these types of updates. A word scramble would be very difficult to execute with the text options Facebook offers you, but using a picture makes it much easier to get the point across. Chick-fil-A went outside the box with this one, and they were rewarded with thousands of Likes and comments.
Coca-Cola
I would have been very surprised if the social media juggernaut that is the Coca-Cola Facebook page didn’t have these kinds of updates. I was glad to see they weren’t ones to disappoint. Unlike their soda, these updates have a formula that is very easy to replicate. Instead of using their logo, they very creatively integrated the iconic silhouette of their bottle into the updates, my personal favorite being the National Pi Day post.
Sharpie
Sharpie does a fantastic job of organically integrating its product in this post. Although it didn’t get as much engagement as the posts featuring Sharpie art, it totally blows their normal status updates out of the water. Given the many uses of their product, I would recommend that Sharpie do all of their status updates like this from now on. Take a normal question or fill in the blank; grab some Sharpies, paper, and a camera, and tell your community management team to go crazy. Throw some fun doodles in there and you’ve got a recipe for really engaging posts.
Boston Red Sox
And finally, my personal favorite. Instead of a “‘Like’ this if you Like the Red Sox and Dislike the Yankees” post, the Boston Red Sox instead chose to symbolize that message with a very creative graphic. That freed up room to include text of the schedule and starting pitchers, not to mention it’s an enormous picture with iconic logos that is sure to catch any Sox fan’s eye.
What’s so great about this type of update is that it takes something which is already a very sound way of engaging fans and wraps it up in a beautiful package. Also, apart from the Red Sox update, they’re all relatively simple and wouldn’t take very long for a graphic designer (or in some cases, a person with basic knowledge of Photoshop) to mock up. I hope more brands post this way. It should make Facebook a lot prettier and a lot more fun.
Have you seen any more examples of normal status updates transformed into pictures? Share in the comments below.
