As I am sure you all have heard, Mark Zuckerberg made a post on Facebook on Thursday, January 11th about the new Facebook algorithm for it’s timeline in order to prioritize people and meaningful connections.
Why the change?
People on Facebook like more pages and “friend” more people over time, pages and people are producing substantially more content than they used to, and thus there’s been a tremendous rise in the quantity of content Facebook has to choose from to show in your feed. Because people are only spending slightly more time on Facebook than they used to, there’s a fight for attention… and the only options Facebook has to decide which content is prioritized based on a combination of a relevancy algorithm and who’s willing to pay the most to have the content shown. There is no other way around it, unfortunately. At least we have the option to increase the likelihood of having our content shown by being able to pay for it!
What do we do!?
1. More Boosted content
The way this update seems is that ads will be penalized, thus promoting content will become more important because businesses aren’t going to be able to find organic growth anymore.
2. Quality Content
It’s important to know the why behind this change and use it to your benefit if possible. In the article, it describes the changes as follows: “That means its 2 billion users will see fewer news articles, viral videos and other media content. Instead, they’ll see more baby pictures and status updates from aunts, childhood friends and co-workers.” This will change company to company, but if it makes sense for a person that has a ‘face’ to its name, then have them start posting on their personal page about industry topics once a month. There are associated risks to that strategy, but it could be another way to reach your audience. Bottom line, Facebook wants to put quality content at the top of people’s feed, so you should invest in creating strategic and quality content that brings people closer together.
3. Roll with the punches/Wait and See
No one knows EXACTLY how this will affect their page and for everyone it will be different. We have to be patient and continue to A/B test to see what is working. You should be paying extra special attention to any social analytics you have.
If you are worried about the changes and unsure what to do, fill out our Preaccess Report (PAR) request and we can see if we can help you! We are a data driven company with a team full of professionals that are looking to guide you through the changes!
