Change is tough, when Arnott’s changed the recipe of the classic Australian snack Shapes it really hit people hard. Now one of our great marketing tools is changing, again! If you haven’t noticed already, Facebook altered its News Feed algorithm as of January. This means that all the videos, brands and maybe that product you looked at ONCE online, will appear a lot less in your feed. Returning to their roots Facebook are making it more about connecting with friends and family, then anything else.
BUT WHY?
Who knows? Mark Zuckerburg has already seen a 4.5% stock drop on the day of the announcement and an overall loss from his net worth of 3.3 billion dollars since that day, now that Zucks.
The rationale behind the change is that Facebook wants the users to have a more meaningful experience online, rather than a pointless scroll through their News Feed. Other sources say this change is going to help solve the problem of Fake News that Facebook is encountering.
QUOTE FROM FACEBOOK’S FEARLESS LEADER
Rest assured, Mark to the rescue, he is here to hit the hard facts and give out no band-aids. Here is a quote from the man himself.
“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media…. 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. But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too.”
WHAT NOW AND WHAT CAN WE DO?
Different forums are saying Facebook is moving into a “pay-to-play” space, after all, they are a profit-making company. Sponsored ads aren’t affected but we are seeing a drop in reach and engagement for clients that have low ad spend budgets or rely on organic content alone.
For companies with small ad spend budgets, what can you do?
With less space for companies on News Feeds, developers are saying we need to get more creative with the content, to be able to fit on that already full train. There has been a trend in the past to share third party content, but you will need to be more original and come up with your own creative content more.
Shifting our focus to show Facebook we care about the consumers enough to make it onto the front page of the virtual magazine, turned friends and family highlight reel. This could translate into creating clever posts focused on engaging with users and more forums for people to connect with each other through your page.
HELLO INFLUENCERS!
What we know from the change is that Facebook is not penalising people pages, just making restrictions on business pages and news. You may have seen on Instagram users with a large following will use the hashtag #ad to show they have been paid to promote a certain product or service. This could translate over to Facebook following this recent change. Companies will be looking more than ever to find online influencers with a large following to promote their product or service on Facebook, through images, video and copy.
And we don’t know what will happen in the Instagram space either. Owned by Facebook, we could see this new algorithm taken up by the photo sharing platform.
THE TAKEAWAYS
- News Feeds will feature less news, videos and posts from groups.
- This doesn’t mean your businesses content will never be seen but it is likely you will have to spend more on advertising to get it there.
- Hopefully less fake news which is news that is financially driven through clicks, ads and NOT TRUE (just read what happened to poor Hillary)
- Facebook tells us they are supposedly “investing in our personal wellbeing, trying to create a more positive experience”.