For this “Desirability Analysis”, I decided to measure the audience’s engagement by two different parameters: the Desirability Score and the Relative Likes Metric. I chose photos that were posted over the last one and half year, so that the Followers number can be considered stable.
With these metrics in mind, I made an approximation of the DS and the RL of all of the pictures in my feed over the past one and a half year and set apart the top three highest performing one, average performing three pictures and least well-performing posts for a separate analysis in each of these categories.
Highest Performing
As noticed from the pictures above, the highest performing posts all had bring color and/or people on them. The top performing picture, with almost 50% more likes than the second most liked picture in the feed, had two people in the picture, with their faces easy to see. It also features a very likeable pet and bright colors. The next picture, rated by Desirability Score, also features lots of bright colors, but no human or non-human characters on it. The third photo has plenty of human characters, but it lacks bright colors to generate more engagement.
The three examples follow the golden ratio proportion very well.
Average Performance
This set of pictures features no human characters and no pets. It also features darker tones of less-saturated colors. In only one of them, I was able to fit a golden ratio proportion. Notice how the middle picture has a nice landscape on it, but less aggressive contrast and colors. The picture on the left can be quite intriguing at a first look, since it features an airplane cockpit in a way that is a little harder to recognize – since that draws in attention, it raised more engagement that the other, brighter and more saturated two.
Low Performance
Interestingly enough, these three pictures have very saturated colors, but lower sets of engagement. It can also be argued that’s due the fact that they have received an exaggerated amount of editing and feel as if they’re not natural, what lowers engagement. None of them feature well set proportions or human characters that people can relate to – except the middle example, in which the character is located in the back plane of the photograph.
Final Remarks and Fabricated Posts
It can be strongly argued that having human or non-human characters within the photograph drastically increases engagement. Bright, natural colors also increase engagement as opposed to darker tones of colors and, especially, to greyest-looking photographs. If photographs appear unnaturally edited, engagement can drop, but slight increases in color saturation can contribute to having a strong audience engagement in the post. Proportion also played an important role in having photographs that perform well – on account of these observations, the three posts above were fabricated in order to assure high audience engagement.
