In a major shift, Facebook photo posts are now the worst performing of all posts by Facebook brand pages.

That's according to data provided to Business Insider by the social-media analytics company Socialbakers.

It was less than a year ago (last April) that photo posts were still driving major engagement on Facebook — 87% of interactions on the top 10% of the brand posts. That's when Socialbakers declared "Photos Are Still King on Facebook".

Here's a screenshot from that post that shows just how well photos did on Facebook back then.

Yet another study on effectiveness of Facebook photo posts vs any other post type in terms of engagement vs reach was published at Stone Temple Consulting as recent as September 2014.

In that post, Stone Temple's Kathy Alice Brown found that, although image posts had the lowest reach, they also boasted the highest engagement.

Why are Facebook Photo Posts Out?

So what changed for Facebook Photo posts?

In August, Facebook announced that it would crack down on the practice of posting photos as link/share/like bait in favor of posts using Facebook’s native link format over the photos-with-links-in-captions workaround.

In other words, do this and not that (image credit - Danny Sullivan at MarketingLand.com):

In that update, Facebook said:

We’ve found that people often prefer to click on links that are displayed in the link format (which appears when you paste a link while drafting a post), rather than links that are buried in photo captions. The link format shows some additional information associated with the link, such as the beginning of the article, which makes it easier for someone to decide if they want to click through. This format also makes it easier for someone to click through on mobile devices, which have a smaller screen.

With this update, we will prioritize showing links in the link-format, and show fewer links shared in captions or status updates.

So it certainly makes sense why, in light of that change to Facebook News Feed algorithm, photos as the primary engagement drivers were dethroned.

What else might've triggered such a drastic reversal of photos losing their ground in Facebook News Feed?

Facebook Video Posts Are the New King

Along with downgrading photo posts, Facebook has been shifting its strategy towards showing more and better natively uploaded videos in their News Feed in recent months.

For instance, in June 2014, Facebook tweaked how they ranked videos people and Pages were uploading directly to Facebook, making sure videos were served more often and more prominently to more people.

Then in September Facebook announced it delivered 1 billion video views per day and began showing everyone view counts on publicly posted videos from users, Pages, and public figures.

In November, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that in five years most Facebook content would be video and last month he announced that videos were getting more than 3 billion views a day on the platform.

What else did Facebook do to ensure videos would become the new King of Facebook News Feed?

♨ Facebook started recommending additional videos to watch after you'd seen one.

♨ It let video publishers include a “call-to-action” link that viewers can click at the end of a video.

♨ Video publishers and Pages got access to previously announced deeper analytics about view counts and unique viewers, as well as how long people kept watching before moving on.

Add to that mix the fact that Facebook autoplays natively uploaded videos, and it makes complete sense why videos had become the new darling of Facebook News Feed.

Facebook Video Posts: the Stats

Fast forward to the present. What exactly did the Socialbakers study find?

Looking at more than 670,000 posts by 4,445 brand pages (not including celebrity, entertainment or media pages) between October 2014 and February 2015, Socialbakers found that video posts had organic reach of 8.71%.

That means that an average of nearly nine fans out of 100 see video posts.

In contrast, the reach was only 3.73% for photo posts, well below the results for text-only statuses (5.77%) and link posts (5.29%). (according to MarketingLand.com)

Here’s Socialbakers’ breakdown of post-based organic reach looked in the fourth quarter of 2014:

The results were lower for Pages with more than 100,000 likes:

Video Posts vs Photo Posts: the Takeaway

So now what?

Should you stop posting photos to your Facebook feed?

If you were doing it to game the News Feed algorithm, then maybe so.

But if photo posts still resonate with your audience, then why on earth would you, right?

Should you add videos as a part of your overall Facebook marketing strategy?

I'd say you'd be wise to do that.

As Jan Rezab, the Socialbakers CEO, told Business Insider:

"Video is proving to be a very engaging format and gaining in popularity; consumers really like them. As we've said before video has fast become the new photo and is the biggest trend we're seeing in social right now. Therefore we'd advise marketers to include video as part of their content strategies."

It's undoubtedly important for us, business owners, to stay on top of marketing trends.

However, current 'trends' are far not always synonymous with 'what works NOW for YOUR audience'.

Ana Hoffman

If you liked this post, please share it and click the FOLLOW button above to get more!

About Ana Hoffman: 90% of your problems can be solved by smart marketing. Solving the other 10% just requires good procrastination skills. Can't help you with the latter, but I do know a thing or two about smart marketing. Want me to prove it?Get my free "Mommy, Where Does Traffic Come From?" traffic report and we'll go from there.