A Facebook sunset post on steroids
Nothing excites a social media manager like hitting “Publish” on a post that you know will wow your audience. Except maybe setting a new social media record for your account or institution.
The University of New Brunswick Future Students Facebook page reached new heights in organic engagement at the end of June. And all it took was an interactive, aerial 360-degree photo of a sunset in New Brunswick’s capital city, home to UNB’s historic Fredericton campus.
The content marketers out there will know that it’s not as easy at it looks, and 360-degree photos are no exception.
After watching the sun set from a patio at the end of the work week, Kurtis Knappe, Online Marketing Officer for UNB Student Recruitment Office, grabbed his drone and headed downtown. Then he spent most Sunday stitching the still photographs together.
Was it worth it?
“Our Future Students Facebook page has around 6,730 followers,” says Kurtis. “This post reached over 230,000 people – organically.”
The 2,250+ shares helped, and the reach went well beyond the page’s prospective student audience. Many alumni and expats thanked UNB for capturing and sharing such a beautiful image of their home.
Higher ed aerial 360 Facebook photos: DYI step by step
So how can you incorporate aerial 360-degree photos on Facebook?
- Take a series of photos
- Kurtis took “rows” of photos – first with the camera pointing level, then up 30 degrees, down 30 degrees, down 70 degrees, and a complete downward shot. The key is to get about a 30% overlap with your photos. You will end up with about 40 shots.
- Shoot in 4:3 aspect ratio and in manual mode.
- Stitch the photos together using software like PTGui.
- Optional: edit the stitched photo in Lightroom to enhance color, sharpness, etc
- Import into Photoshop to fill in the missing sky.
Since the drone Kurtis uses doesn’t allow you to point 100% upwards, he grabbed sky from a different photo and blended it into the stitched photo. - Export.
Make sure the photo is in 2:1 format. - Upload to Facebook. If Facebook doesn’t recognize the photo as a 360 photo, you will need to edit the EXIF (Exchangeable image file format) tags with these recommendations from Facebook. Kurtis used pyExifToolGUI to edit the EXIF data.
- Watch the magic (that is, reach and engagement)
Extra from Karine Joly: More about Facebook 360 Photos [Infographics]
Want to learn more about Facebook 360 Photos?
Check out this section of an infographics by eReviews. You’re among the first ones to see it. It wasn’t even completed up until yesterday 🙂
Meet the Author: Kelsey Seymour
Kelsey Seymour is the manager of digital marketing at the University of New Brunswick. She manages UNB’s institutional online presence: unb.ca, twitter and facebook. Kelsey is a graduate of the Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate program in Social Media Marketing for Higher Ed.