Facebook’s Big New Change For Businesses
At the beginning of 2018, Facebook started changing how business’ posts show up for Facebook users. What does this mean for you? Take a look at the basics of Facebook and what changes were made to business accounts.
A quick guide to Facebook terms
- Post: A single upload of text, photos, videos
- Like: A way to give positive or negative feedback to a post
- Share: A way to show your friends a specific post
- News Feed: A collection of posts you see when you open Facebook
- Followers: Friends and family that can see your posts
- Profile: A “homepage” for humans
- Page: A “homepage” for businesses
How the Facebook News Feed works
Facebook’s News Feed doesn’t show you posts in chronological order. The order and frequency of your News Feed are set to your interests based on a few factors:
- How you interact with your friends = more/less from your friends
- Type of post you interact with = more/less those type of posts (sports photos, DIY videos, etc.)
- Posts with more likes, shares, comments = more often in your News Feed
- Relatively current (within the past few days) = more likely to be in your News Feed
Facebook adjusts your News Feed so that it’s more interesting to you, and not just random articles and posts that you don’t care about.
The new change
At the beginning of this year, Facebook announced they were touching up the way they adjust your News Feed. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said users have complained that posts from business, brands and media are too frequent, and are “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
Facebook wants to urge people to have discussion and interaction with other users instead of just blindly watching a video or scrolling through an article. In a way, this is how Facebook has always been. Instead of a place to go read a random dump of articles, it was created to connect people together.
“Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”
How you can still get visibility
If you strategize your posts, you can still be seen often in users’ News Feeds. Facebook says businesses should create posts that “encourage meaningful interactions between people.” Here are a few ways to do that:
- Be authentic. Focus less on selling and more on creating relationships with your customers.
- Post regularly. Not too much, but more than rarely. Try the afternoon or late evening hours.
- Use photos, videos and live videos. These get a better reaction than posts with only text. Showing faces also gets more attention.
- Create good quality, relevant, interesting content. Avoid filler and fluff.
- Boost and advertise. You can still pay to have your posts shown more often to your own followers and other potential customers.
Users can also set their Facebook to show more of whichever businesses they want by going to the See First tab in their News Feed Preferences. (You can encourage your followers to do this, but it hasn’t worked very well in the past.)
Avoid “engagement-bait” posts that say things like, “Like and Share if you LOVE sandwiches!” and “Share this post for a chance to win tickets!” In December, Facebook began demoting these types of posts.
Our social media tactics
After this news, we’ve definitely changed how we strategize our own and our clients’ Facebook posts. With changes like these, it can be tough to keep up with social media tactics. If you need a hand in reaching your audience on social media, let us know!
