You Have Snapchat to Thank for the Facebook News Feed Update!
Facebook — home to 1.65 billion users and counting — announced yesterday that it will be making some pretty significant changes to the algorithm that determines what will appear in people’s News Feeds, and the news, for marketers, may not be so good.
The social media giant has decided that family comes first and that the Facebook news feed update will protect the precious posts made by users’ own friends and family. These personal posts will take priority over posts made by capital ‘P’ Pages and publishers.
What does the Facebook news feed update mean for your Page?
The honchos at Facebook admit that your Page’s reach is likely to be impacted negatively, in a ‘small but noticeable’ way. Just how far your organic reach will drop, it seems, will be determined, as usual, by the quality of the content you are sharing.
‘We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends,’ says Facebook.
Blame it on Snapchat
Why the switch? While the optimist would say that Mark Zuckerberg and his crew want to make sure they are showing people what they want to see, and giving them the best bang for their 20+ minutes per visit, there’s probably a little more at work here. Facebook has seen a marked decline over the past two years in overall sharing — and specifically in users’ sharing of personal posts.
And Facebook has a hunch that this is due, at least in part, to users choosing to share their stories (and photos and videos and innermost thoughts) on more visual or interactive platforms — hello, Snapchat?
Facebook naturally doesn’t want to lose users to the new kids on the block. And your interactions and sharing patterns are what helps Facebook’s advertising network determine if you’d rather see an ad from a realtor or a retirement home. Facebook NEEDS users to share personal posts if it’s going to have a prayer at getting targeting right.
What does this mean for brands fighting to get noticed on Facebook?
In a nutshell, if your audience tends to like, comment or share your content, you should weather this algorithm storm relatively unscathed. If not, it might be time to rethink your social campaigns to gear them less towards self-promotion, and more towards personal sharing and engagement.