“You’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard—it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.” – Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook is constantly developing and changing in order to give its users a better experience. For marketers, this means constantly staying on top of new changes and figuring out how to adapt content to work with updates.
Recently, the website, which has over one billion active users, has announced another change which will drastically alter how businesses use Facebook for content and advertising. Businesses will now have to ensure their traffic, conversions and engagements won’t take too much of a hit in light of this change.
The Change
Central to Facebook is the newsfeed, which displays updates from friends, groups and pages you follow on Facebook. Facebook decides through its algorithms what kind of content will be prioritised and brought to the top of the newsfeed. As the Facebook grew over the years, businesses latched on and Facebook updated to become friendlier to businesses.
The new algorithm prioritises content from people you commonly interact with, so most likely your friends and family et cetera. It believes such interactions are more valuable to people than those with pages and businesses and are more likely to enhance wellbeing, and therefore, promote usership.
This makes sense, after all, Facebook started as a social networking site for friends to stay connected online. It appears it is now going back to its roots.
How Businesses Can Adapt
- Create content that will engage conversations.
Comments are now the most important factor in your comment making it to the top of the newsfeed. Likes, and shares are also powerful. At the bottom of the list are clicks, opens and hovering over posts.
This means considering content that will either promote discussion and conversations or touch people and make them want to comment.
- Start using live videos
Research has demonstrated that people on average watch live content three times longer than pre-recorded videos. It also gains many more interactions as it gives the chance for audience to ask questions and receive real-time answers.
Live videos also give a chance for businesses to show new products, events and discussions in real time. This in turn improves relationships between brands and consumers, as the relationship feels more personal.
- Don’t post engagement-bait or click-bait
This new algorithm could promote brands to try and cheat the system via engagement-bait posts.
Over the past few years, Facebook has become an absolute minefield of this type of content, and now it has rightfully had enough.
Engagement bait content comprises including words such as ‘COMMENT HERE’, ‘TYPE YES IF YOU…’ and ‘TAG YOUR FRIEND..’.
Facebook is trying to fight against this kind of content and are aiming to only ensure the most authentic, genuine content is boosted.
- Use Facebook groups
Facebook wants to focus on promoting material that connects people and that will be shareable. Facebook groups are spaces where like-minded people can come together and have shared discussions. Businesses can aim to use such groups to promote engagement and collaboration.
Overall, it’s useful to keep up to date with changes Facebook makes to its newsfeed algorithms but all businesses should strive to produce engaging, authentic and organic content which its users find interesting, useful and engaging, without needing to post engagement-bait content.
Ella Patenall writes for Inspiring Interns, which specialises in finding candidates their perfect internship. To browse our graduate jobs London listings, visit our website.