On January 11th Mark Zuckerberg made a big announcement saying Facebook will roll out changes to allow their users to see more posts from people and fewer posts from businesses and media. Yikes! Does this mean businesses no longer have traction on Facebook? Not quite.
I’ve been doing some research, and want to break down what’s really happening to help you better understand it.
WHY WAS THIS ANNOUNCED
In 2016 Facebook released a new algorithm that changed your Facebook experience significantly.
Quick note: An algorithm is a proprietary set of rules that’s programmed into the platform so Facebook, or other social media channels, control what you see and the order, time, and frequency in which you see it. Everything is calculated. No one knows exactly how to control the algorithm, except for those who create the algorithm high up at Facebook. But social media experts like myself can study it and make educated guesses.
Unpaid posts (organic posts) were drastically limited, and Facebook took a larger role in controlling the content you saw, and favoured those businesses or media outlets that paid for their posts through boosting or ad campaigns.
So, what did that mean for you? You saw less of your friends’ posts and more paid posts. Because of how this turned out, Facebook felt it lost the reason it was founded in the first place – to provide you with what they call meaningful interactions.
HOW I SEE IT
A simple way I try to explain these changes is that Facebook is a balancing act.
On one hand it has shareholders to appease, and it needs revenue from businesses to make money and thrive. On the other hand, it needs users like you and I to be able to see and engage with those posts in order to make it worthwhile for the businesses to invest in ads. If users are finding their news feeds muddied with too many promotional posts, they’ll be turned off and use the platform less.
An important thing to keep in mind is Facebook survives off of the ad spend from businesses, so they won’t want to shut them out. It’s just a matter of making an adjustment so this balancing act evens out again.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
There are 3 things you can do to boost your chances of being seen.
1. Have high quality posts that encourage engagement.
Part of Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement said:
“As we roll this out, 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.
For example, there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We’ve seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”
With this, I believe that having engaging posts is and will be more important than ever. Businesses need to have high quality posts that encourage conversations to show their value and give posts traction.
The more authentic interactions a post has, the better it will do. Instead of relying on Facebook to boost posts, it will be up to the public to determine whether something has merit and deserves to be seen by more eyes.
2. Consider working with influencers.
With this shift to more ‘people’ focused posts, influencers now have more power than ever. Having one, or a few, people share your brand, service, or product on your behalf could be an ideal workaround while business posts get less traction.
Having said this, if you’re paying influencers to promote your products in their posts, it needs to be as authentic as possible. There are also strict regulations from the FTC that are being rolled out to influencers on how they can and can’t post about promotions. This is for a whole other video and blog post, but reach out to us any time if you want to consider bringing on influencers to support and promote your brand.
3. Have a holistic approach to social media.
Regardless of announcements, social media and its algorithms are always changing.
Having a wide variety of posts on a wide variety of platforms can increase your chances of your posts being seen. Try diversifying your types of posts and include a mix of organic posts, paid posts, photos, video, live video, and influencers.
It’s important to dedicate a good amount of time to this, or trust experts like us to take care of all of this for you.
It will take several months and careful watch of your feeds to see how this Facebook announcement really affects us. I’ll be studying this closely in the meantime and will post updates as I see them!
Read Mark Zuckerberg’s original post announcing the changes here:
One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.We built…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, January 11, 2018