Changes to the Facebook Algorithm

16 Feb Changes to the Facebook Algorithm

Yes it’s February, and yes we’ve all forgotten about our New Year’s resolutions but, if you’re using Facebook (FB) for business there’s still time to make some new ones.

Have you noticed some changes in your page’s reach? Maybe you’re not getting the response you expected? At the start of January, Mark Zuckerberg announced a major change to the way content is delivered in our FB news feeds. These Facebook changes are difficult to take for business and brands using the platform to speak to their clients and reach out to new ones.

We’re going to take a look at what the changes are, how we intend to cope and help you keep on track.

Facebook changes

Basically, FB is changing what its users see on their news feeds – delivering more posts from friends and family (F&F) than business and media channels. If you’re like some of us, we use FB for both reasons – it’s great to see what our favourite brands are up to while mixing it up with F&F updates!

The change has been made to promote ‘meaningful social interactions’ rather than business promotion, which makes sense as FB was developed in the first instance to help people stay connected and feel closer together – a la ‘friends reunited’ (for those of you with long memories). Zuckerberg stated the reason for change was that messages from businesses and brands were getting in the way of personal news which allowed us to connect with each other. So how do we get over this knock back?

Get engaged

The guys at Facebook like to keep busy, having concentrated their efforts on increasing video content, you may have noticed more and more video content on your news feed from businesses and shares by F&F. Zuckerberg argues that because brands are now actively producing more video than F&F the focus of what is shown on your news feed has moved and he wants to get it back on track. So, while FB is attempting to enrich the user experience, it is at the cost of the businesses and brands that use the platform for commercial gain. (Interesting point considering Facebook now plays adverts in the MIDDLE of video content – that’s a rant for another occasion).

For some users that’s great news, however a good chunk of users enjoy the ‘news’ element of their feeds – getting the latest updates from their F&F and favourite brands is why they use FB in the first place. Ok, they might not enjoy the odd poorly targeted sponsored post but still, you get what you want from FB and everyone has their own way of using it – that’s the point of a social platform… natural evolution.

Zuckerberg even expects people to spend less time on FB and engagement in general to decrease. We know, seems bonkers to us too, it’s like he’s having a closing down sale. The changes will be rolled out over the next few months but you will eventually see less content from brands and business and more from F&F.

Everyone will have to adapt to accommodate this change but hopefully it will make businesses and brands produce better quality content and get rid of the ‘clickbaiters’.

For our Novemnine clients this shouldn’t affect you too much, we have always tried to create good quality content and post on the social media channels with information rather than baiting people into engaging so, it’s business as usual here.

We’ll be speaking about what it actually means for businesses in our next blog and have a look at ways we could improve FB usage in the future.

If you’re a small business thinking of getting more active on your social channels but don’t really know where to start, why don’t you drop us a line – you can also contact us on Facebook and Twitter. We don’t post much on our social channels as we save most of the gold for our clients so you won’t get spammed.

photo credit: By Ink Drop