In recent years, it has become harder to drive organic traffic from Facebook. Not only does Facebook limit the reach of pages to less than 2%, but there are over 80 million pages you are competing with every time you post. This is why, if you want to drive traffic from Facebook, you need to do that extra bit to the links you post.
One way to go about this is by creating better Facebook link images because they take up the most space in a Facebook post and stand out from the text.
Image Source: Shopify’s Facebook page
If you create more attractive Facebook link images and optimize them for clicks, you will generate more attention and also drive more traffic.
So, today I am going to show you how to create a Facebook link image that gets more clicks. I will also include how to optimize your website with these images to make sure they drive long term traffic.
1. Design clickable Facebook link images
The key to creating clickable images is to make them all about the blog post or landing page you are promoting. If you do your best to advertise the page properly with attention generating design and persuasive text imprinted on the image, you will be able to drive more traffic. Here’s how you can do it.
First, open up your image editing tool. You can use something free like Canva. Next, choose a template that has been made for Facebook ads. These images are 1200 X 628 pixels in size which the 1.91:1 image ratio is recommended by Facebook.
When you embed images of this size in your page and set the meta tags to pick it when shared, it will ensure that the big thumbnail image appears as your Facebook post image.
It doesn’t have to always be as big as 1200 X 628 pixels. The minimum size needs to be 560 X 292.
Next, pick a template or upload your own photo. I recommend that you pick a template and then modify the palette and the images present on it with your own. Canva has hundreds of free and paid attractive templates to choose from.
After that, modify the text. As mentioned, the key to driving traffic with Facebook post images is to promote the page you want to drive traffic to. The better you do that with well-written copy, the more traffic you will drive.
For example, if you were promoting a blog post, just adding the title of the post will do (especially if you have already done the hard work of coming up with a persuasive title). It could be something like this Facebook link image promoting the post on How To Use Powerful Link Retargeting To Grow Your Business from Mike Alton of The Social Media Hat.
As you can see, Mike Alton just added the title of the post to the image as it already generates curiosity.
You should do something similar. He also branded the image with his website address, which is something you should do, too. You could also brand it with other details like your logo or company name if you prefer.
After you create this first version of the image, go ahead and create more. You can split-test them to see which will drive the best results. But only change one or two details in each image like the font or font size or color scheme. This is because if you make too many changes, you won’t know what brought about the positive or negative result.
2. Add one image to the page and the meta tags
You might not yet know which image will drive the best results. But you should leave it to guesswork for now and add one. This is because when you are experimenting you will begin to see an influx in traffic and some of these visitors will share the post directly from your website. When they do this, you want to ensure that the Facebook post gets as many clicks as possible. So, adding a temporary link image to the tags will help significantly.
You can easily do this by following Facebook’s guidelines to add an image to the tags. If you run a WordPress blog, you can alternatively use a plugin like Yoast or Social Warfare.
You just have to upload the image to your site and choose it with the plugin.
3. Split test images organically and with paid methods
Next, begin testing out the images you created with both organic and paid methods.
To test it out organically, you can use a tool like ShareKit. It lets you customize the Facebook link image, description, and title for the links you share on Facebook. You can use it to create multiple custom links (with multiple images, titles, and descriptions) for the same landing page URL.
So, create multiple customized URLs using the different images you created and post them over a month on your Facebook page. ShareKit will track their performance and show you which image drove the highest clicks.
Tracking the number of likes and comments the Facebook post gets is something you should avoid doing, as these metrics don’t matter. Your aim here is to figure out which image will drive the most traffic, so focus on clicks.
You can also test out the Facebook link images effectiveness at driving traffic, through split test experiments using short term Facebook ads. There are tools like AdEspresso that can help you do this easily.
You don’t have to spend much on these ads. For each link image, you can have a maximum budget of $5 to $10.
4. Add the best performing image to the landing page
Now that you know which image got you the best results, you can simply replace it with the image that you already added to your meta tags.
Now, find your best Facebook link images
These are the 4 steps you need to follow to create Facebook link images that get more clicks. In the beginning, you will find it hard to figure out which types of images get you the most traffic. But as you begin to experiment, you will see a pattern and will be able to predict the types of images that work best. And you won’t need to run these tests every time you create the thumbnail images.
How do you create Facebook link images that get more clicks? Did I forget to add anything important? Please leave your comments below.
Guest author: Mitt Ray is the founder of Social Marketing Writing, where you can download 100 Free Social Media Background Images.