Why Facebook made changes to News Feed?

Facebook has been listening to comments and suggestions from users over the past year. There were complaints from users about posts that they don’t really care about showing up in their news feed. In order ensure people have better user experience,? Facebook started exploring changes to the algorithm.

Main goals driving these changes were to prioritize:

• posts from people that they care about
• posts that translate to deeper, meaningful interactions between people
• posts that reflect more thought and care
• posts from people in the network

On January 11. 2018, Facebook rolled out its biggest change to News Feed Algorithm to address these priorities. With these changes, Facebook anticipates that people will spend less time on Facebook, & the time they do spend is better, since they are browsing quality content.

How is your brand affected by News Feed changes?

Brand marketers have been using Facebook to grow their network, build engagement with their brand and customer loyalty. They are doing this by pushing content to promote their brand.?Typically, up to one third of publisher referral traffic comes from Facebook. With changes to the algorithm, posts from brand pages have very less chances of showing up in News Feeds, unless the content is relevant and of quality. You can no longer rely on organic reach to generate referral traffic.

For marketers, that are already engaged in Facebook marketing via advertising platform, these changes have little or no effect for now. You are still encouraged to use quality content in your boosted posts and ads and not use clickbait-style promotions such as “Like our product? if you agree….”. Posts that ask engaging questions such as “What feature do you think we need to add to our product?” are expected to rank higher, because these tend to start meaningful interaction between your brand and people.

How to fill the gap created by the new News Feed Algorithm?

Marketers are aware of the reality that, they can not rely on just one platform to build their brand. It is too risky. They can not depend on just one source for referral traffic.

• Brands can also use strategies to reward/delight customers offline, & encourage them to go on brand page to share their experience online, which can go viral.
• Explore options of marketing on Instagram & Snapchat if those strategies make sense for your business
• Businesses will need to rethink their Facebook strategies for 2018, starting with reducing their post frequency to share only highly relevant and engaging posts.
• Brands need to take quick action with their Facebook content strategies to dig in to the data on ?who? their fans are and what makes them tick so that brand content is synonymous with relevant content

On Facebook, page administrators should:

• Consider using Facebook Live more often
• Advise people that follow your page to adjust their settings to include your page in Facebook’s See First feature
• Build Communities with groups to interact with people that are are loyal to your brand
• Local businesses should get on Facebook local application
• Integrate Facebook Messenger into Facebook marketing strategy
• Reduce post frequency on brand page. Focus on more meaningful content that reinforces key brand messages
• Use Facebook advertising platform for awareness and promotions

Conclusion

Facebook algorithm changes are meant to generate better user experience with quality & meaningful content. Obviously, brands are going to need some time to adjust their content strategies and adapt to these changes. Once they have a solid content strategy with relevant and meaningful content that that can spark conversation among fans and followers, these changes will become the norm and align with Facebook’s ultimate goal.

About the Author

Kalpana Murthy, President/CEO at WSI Plano, DBA Kriti Web Solutions, LLC. is a Digital Strategist, Consultant, Speaker/Trainer, & Software Engineer who is passionate about bringing affordable technology solutions to businesses to build online presence. Kalpana Murthy is a certified partner with Google, HubSpot, Sharp Spring, SEMRush and other digital solution providers.