On average Facebook users spend most time looking at a) newsfeeds and b) profiles… but a very close third is photos. It follows that creative use of photography is a good idea for marketers, as illustrated by these five brand examples of photos being used effectively as part of Facebook activity.

1 Ask people to ‘like’ their favourite

Bearing in mind one should not attach liking a post or photo to a competition prize under Facebook’s promotion rules, asking for (non-prize-related) preference is a simple way to engage fans. If you create a Facebook album and add several photos at once to it, this makes for a highly visual wall post that is more attention-grabbing than one photo alone. Here is a good example from the StylistPick Facebook page:

2 Collect photos from users on your website

Revolution bars created a Facebook photo album and filled it with photos submitted via their website. This helped to add an extra layer of moderation for user generated images, so what appeared on Facebook was limited to the best photos they collected from users. This method needs a second step for maximum engagement – informing participants their photos are live on Facebook and they can go in and tag themselves. Every time a Facebook user tags a photo this action is shared with their friends in turn via their newsfeed – capitalising on the viral aspect of sharing on the platform:

3 Include important messages in Facebook album descriptions

The album description field is a good place to include a message you want to share, and even links to send users on elsewhere. Add a succinct, engaging sentence every time you create a new photo album. This is useful for people who go into the album itself and also, importantly, because the description will post into a Facebook update with every new upload you make. Here UNDP include a message on democratic goverance - the illustration also shows the limited number of words available to make an impact:

4 Share event photos and encourage tagging

Upload photos from events you host and tell people who attend that you will be doing that. This will encourage attendees to like your page, tag themselves in photos and share them on. In this example BT are sharing their Community Challenge Volunteering Day (disclosure: BT is a Porter Novelli client):

5 Collect wall post photos from users and interact

Let users tag your page in photos (this can be done in your Facebook page administrator’s image settings) then follow up the conversation by commenting on them.

You will be able to post-moderate the photos – and for the ones that are suitable/most appropriate you can comment and continue the conversation with that Facebook user (which, depending on their personal privacy settings, will be visible to all of their friends). This will also help you build up a bank of user-generated images.

In the example below Baileys respond enthusiastically to the posting of a Baileys trifle image by a user – encouraging all of their Facebook fans to follow the recipe and have a go making it themselves the following weekend.

Have you been Trunking yet? Don’t be the last.

This week Porter Novelli London are getting well and truly behind David Walliam’s brave charity challenge for Sport Relief by encouraging nationwide #Trunking. David is swimming 140 miles of the Thames in just eight days, and our client – BT – is helping cheer him on by collecting the best pictures together in a gallery of Trunking fame on Facebook.

In the spirit of the great traditions of planking and the slightly more disturbing horsemanning, trunking requires participants to strike a swimming pose (goggles, flippers and other swimming paraphernalia entirely optional) and share a picture online.

Why trunk? Every Trunk is a cheer for David… Since he began his goliath 140mile swim, he has already suffered the early onset of hyperthermia and an upset stomach from swallowing Thames River water, the poor love.

So please let’s show him we appreciate his efforts by #Trunking, spreading the word, and donating to Sport Relief. This is the first of three Sport Relief challenges, for which BT is hoping to raise £1 million. Every penny raised by the public will be spent by Comic Relief to help people living incredibly tough lives, both at home in the UK and across the world’s poorest countries.

Here are my favourite Trunking pictures from the week so far – can you do better?

• Send your Trunking pictures to trunking@btinternet.com
• Tweet using the #Trunking hashtag
• Check out the gallery on Facebook
• Donate to Sport Relief

The current famine in the Horn of Africa is threatening to claim millions of lives. In Somalia alone nearly 4 million people are at risk, half of them children.

Although famine has been formally declared by the UN, appeals by charities providing aid in the area struggle to gain media cut-through, and in the UK, UNICEF executive director David Bull has spoken about the “children’s famine” being overshadowed by the phone hacking saga.

After hearing him interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme Porter Novelli’s UK MD Sally Ward contacted UNICEF in London to see how we could help – and as a result we’ve provided a week of pro bono support to help the charity get its urgent fundraising message out to the wider world.

Over the last few days 10 PNers have worked in the charity’s office in Farringdon alongside its press and digital teams to reach out to influential bloggers from the parenting, social media and lifestyle sectors asking them to donate a tweet or a blog post to this worthwhile cause. We’re also developing longer term campaign platforms to keep the story in the spotlight, and lifesaving funds coming in.

If you’d like to do your part to help there are two easy ways to contribute: simply donate £10 by texting FAMINE to 70007, or contribute online at www.unicef.org.uk/pn

And to stay in touch with the latest news on the relief effort, follow @unicef_uk on Twitter.