Have you ever wondered about the impact of adding photos, videos, GIFs or links to your post in your enterprise social network? About a year ago I wrote a blog post called ‘Do photos and videos spark conversation and engagement on enterprise social networks?’. The main conclusion was that you get more replies and likes when you attach a photo or a video to a message. Actually, attaching just about anything would lead to more replies and likes. Since then we’ve been working on further validating these findings and making these insights available in SWOOP.  

One of the things we realised after publishing the blog post was that there’s a big ‘gotcha’ hiding in the detail. Our initial research didn’t distinguish between the effect is has when you’re attaching something to a post versus a reply. The early research combined the data from attachments into the effect on all messages. We have now found the overwhelming majority of attachments are made to posts, with fewer instances of people adding attachments when replying. We also found the number of replies and likes you get is much higher on posts than replies.

Making the case for attaching files, images and links  

The two screenshots below are from our own internal social network and show the difference on the impact of including attachments in posts and replies. You can see a total of 52% of posts include an attachment (and 48% don’t), whereas a total of 15% of replies include an attachment (and 85% don’t): 

You can also see the number of replies and likes for different attachment types are much higher for posts compared with replies. The overall original conclusion that photos and videos generate replies and likes is valid but the effect is even more accentuated for posts.  

Understanding the impact of attachments on posts 

The above leaves one question unanswered, which I know is on the mind of many internal communicators: How do I know how my content is performing?  

That’s why we’ve included a new feature on the SWOOP dashboard where you can see not only which conversation included the attachment people reacted to, but also allows you to click to open it straight from SWOOP: 

Have fun with attachments, but don’t go crazy!   

Now, before you start telling yourself that from now on every single post you make will include a snazzy picture or a cool video, I would like to provide a word of caution. I think there’s a real risk of saturating your enterprise social network with too many photos and videos and that if you do, you’ll start to see a drop-off in the response rate. I don’t have anything but a hunch on this one, but we’ll certainly keep an eye out for this so we can build into SWOOP some guidance on the potential risks of attaching photos and video too often. Stay tuned.  

Finally, I also want to stress that adding a photo or video to a message isn’t the only way you can get conversation going. Something as simple as asking a question has a tremendous impact and generates, on average, 150% more replies as I outlined in the blog post ‘The power of the question mark’. My personal belief is that you do not run any risk of overusing this.  

Are you curious to see how your content is performing? Give SWOOP a go with a free, two-week free trial. Contact us now.