Facebook recently announced major changes to its News feed. Changes that will most likely affect your business page in one way or another. The update? Basically, there will be less public content in the News feed. This includes videos and other posts from publishers or businesses. Business page posts will continue to appear in the News feed though there will be less of them.
Facebook is optimizing the News feed ranking so people have more opportunity to interact with people they care about. The News feed uses signals like how many people react to, comment on or share a post to determine how high they appear in the News feed. With this latest update, Facebook is prioritizing posts that “spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.”
If your content generates conversation than you have nothing to worry about. Content that generates conversation how holds priority at the top of the News feed. Engagement bait tactics are still out and these types of posts will continue to see a decrease in reach. Business pages should also expect to see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. Pages that already have little engagement will most likely see the biggest decrease in reach and engagement.”
According to Facebook, the move is designed to encourage people to interact more with the stuff they actually do see. The thinking is that you’re probably more likely to comment and discuss a post shared from a family member than one shared by a business you follow. Zuckerberg says, “Now, I want to be clear: by making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down.” He wrote. “But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable.” this is not the greatest news for publishers and brands that rely on Facebook for most or all traffic, or a business who uses it as a form of organic marketing. Facebook is basically telling these businesses their content is no longer going to go far in the newsfeed, and many brands spend a lot of time and money on creative stuff just for that.
“Facebook admitting that people will likely spend less time on Facebook had to be sour news for investors. The more time people spend on Facebook, the more ads they consume, and the more money Facebook can make. Less time, at least on paper, seems like it will correlate to less revenue.”
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