Facebook recently made a huge announcement about the way that its News Feed works and what this means for its users.
Zuckerberg, in a sweeping post on Facebook, said the company would change the filter for the News Feed to prioritise what friends and family share, while reducing the amount of non-advertising content from publishers and brands.
But there is no need to panic!
These changes are being put in place to primarily stop misleading news and misinformation, increase engagement between its users, improve the experience for consumers and develop “meaningful interaction”.
Zuckerberg wrote “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,”.
Being a passive member on social media is the opposite of being social and Facebook are looking to rectify this by getting people to engage with each other more. To help users engage more they will look to show its users more posts from friends and family and show them less organic content from business pages.
These changes will mean fewer low-quality, mind-numbing, “funny” videos in our newsfeeds….which I am sure, we are all in favour of.
But what does this mean for businesses?
These changes are just another step by Facebook to move towards being a full “pay to play” platform, putting one last nail in the coffin for brands who only rely on organic reach to promote their content.
If you use Facebook and Instagram to market your business, you will know that organic reach is really low, with probably around 2% of your page fans seeing your content, if you are lucky. If you just rely on organic reach then your brand and its content will not be seen and you will have been wasting a huge amount of time on posting content that nobody sees. Brands have been paying to achieve meaningful reach on Facebook for a long time now, so a further hit to organic reach which rarely gets above 3% isn’t going to be a desperate shock to the system.
These changes mean that its essential to have a budget allocated for promoting your content via Facebook to ensure its reaches your target audience. There is no better tool at getting your brand in front of your target audience than with FB and these changes will only help improve this.
Facebook has built an empire on the behaviour, demographic and interest information that it has on its users and this has enabled brands to specifically target their perfect audience with content they enjoy. This has meant that brands can reach their target audience easily and achieve excellent ROI on their campaigns. For Facebook, brands using the Ad platform correctly has meant that users see content that’s relevant to them therefore maximising the user experience.
The FB News Feed changes will only look to increase engagement further therefore enabling Facebook to get more information on its users and thus allowing brands to better target their content.
But what does this mean for brands who already have an allocated budget for promoting their content?
Brands who already promote their brand through social media will need to focus more on better understanding what motivates people to interact with their brand in a meaningful way and focus on creating richer, more valuable content.
Overall, if your brand’s relationship with its audience is strong, your content is relevant, you engage with your audience and you promote your content via the Facebook Ad Manager platform then you’ll not only survive the change but you will prosper.
If you have any questions on Facebook marketing and how you can make the most of this platform to grow your business then drop me an email on danny.cleaton@hoopla-marketing.com.
Many Thanks
Danny Cleaton
Social Media and Digital Marketing Expert at Hoopla Marketing
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