Facebook is constantly rolling out new teaks to their news feed algorithm – and it seems that every-time one of these Facebook news feed updates comes out – business owners suffer. This last week yet another update was announced via a post by Mark Zuckerberg himself where he talks about Facebook’s move to “helping you find relevant content” by moving the news feed focus more towards friends, family, groups, and social interactions.
What Did The Latest Facebook News Feed Algorithm Change?
In a nutshell – the new algorithm will prioritize posts from your friends & family, and posts that spark conversations, over public content. Unlike some have speculated – this doesn’t mean that page updates, or sponsored posts, will be going away. However this does mean that posts that don’t focus on social interaction will see a decrease in reach.
As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.
What Does This Mean For My Facebook Page?
The latest Facebook news feed update means that you’re going to have to seriously reconsider your marketing approach on Facebook. Facebook is focusing heavily on going back to its roots as a social network meant to bring people closer together. With that – their focus lies on social interaction and communication – which means you’re going to have to create engaging posts that directly spark conversation if you hope to maintain any type of organic reach. The difficulty here is that you can’t really ask for that interaction anymore – as that may cause Facebook to consider your post as engagement-bait.
Think outside the box, create videos that showcase something cooking which may generate questions from your viewers. Discuss meaningful current events & issues that relate to your community. Generate DIY content, or instructional videos, which truly help people.
Of-course you can always boost your posts – however with the limited space being given to even sponsored posts within the newsfeed – you’ll want to make sure that you optimize your ads for placements outside the news feed. Furthermore, as organic reach decreases, more and more business pages will turn to Facebook ads – which means more competition & a higher advertising cost.