During the last couple months, Facebook has been rolling out changes to its news feed algorithm to prioritize content from “friends, family and groups” and help people spend time on Facebook in a more meaningful way. Here’s what this change means, how it could impact your business and what you can do about it.Being that the goal of these news feed changes is to create more meaningful interactions, Facebook says it will show fewer posts from untrustworthy news sources and publishers and will use its updated algorithm to show you content it thinks you will be most interested in. Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed at Facebook, stated on their blog update that “Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.”
According to Facebook, these changes could potentially have a positive impact on your business since there will be less viral videos and public content taking up the attention of your audience. This may be true, but your followers’ friends and family posts may still be seen over content that your business posts. Because of this, here are some ways to help your Facebook content get noticed on your audience’s news feed:
- Advertise Smarter – While organic reach has had a downward trend on social media for quite some time, implications of the new algorithm will only make that downward trend continue. Because of the decrease in organic reach, fine-tuning your Facebook advertising and ensuring your ads target the right audience is more important than ever.
- Share Meaningful Content – Another way to help your posts be seen by your followers is by sharing meaningful content. This means sharing content that can help to spark conversation and provide value such as live videos and educational content.
- Join or Create a Facebook Group – Focus more time on having a presence in Facebook groups. Because audience engagement is high in groups and members in the group share the same interest, contributing to a group can help your content be categorized as meaningful, and therefore, have higher visibility under this new algorithm.
- Optimize Ads for Other Placements – Don’t forget that your ad placement options on Facebook don’t end with the News Feed. Other options include groups, right column, instant articles, in-stream video, and more. Keep these other ad placements in mind when creating your ads.
The Facebook News Feed changes may or may not have a huge impact on your business, but one thing is certain – maintaining relevance in the Facebook world can help your business be seen.
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