By now I am sure you are aware that you are a commodity to Facebook, your attention is anyways. To keep your interest and attention Facebook’s always making tweaks to its news feed algorithm to ensure that users are served the most engaging and relevant materials.
Usually, these updates are good for overall user experiences, they can also cause significant headaches for marketers, and there were two that were recently announced which marketers need to be aware of if they want to make the most of the already dwindling organic reach on Facebook. [1]
Let’s take a quick crash course on Facebook’s News Feed algorithm’s before getting into the updates. With so many people and brands now active on the social network, the amount of content eligible to be served to Facebook users daily is huge. Its estimated that each user is shown up to 1,500 different pieces of content daily and see roughly 300 pieces of content. Real estate competition is extremely high and to manage all of this and ensure that each user gets a relevant experience, Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm measures over a thousand different factors to help sift through the noise. [1]
Below are two of what Facebook considers when it comes to choosing which content to serve – these updates are particularly relevant for marketers looking to make the most of their presence on Facebook.
For Videos, Intent and Repeat Viewership Matter
As we have noticed in the recent year, video has become a huge trend when it comes to marketing on Facebook, however, you need to post videos people will want to watch. Facebook released a News Feed algorithm update in December that will give preference to videos people are returning to Facebook to watch and videos people are searching for.
Broken down into two factors:
- Intent – if people are going out of their way to find video content through searching on Facebook or going directly to your page, your video will receive greater distribution and will reach more people. [1]
- Repeat Viewership – if people are watching videos from the same publisher frequently, that publisher’s videos will get preference in the News Feed making it easy for new people to discover the content. [1]
Things to take away: Don’t make videos just for the heck of it. If you want value out of your investment in social video, especially on Facebook, make sure the content is what people will want to watch and come back to view more than once.
Engagement Bait Gets Devalued
Do you see posts in your news feed that say something like “Like this if…” or “Share with a friend…”? These types of posts will now be devalued as part of the News Feed update, meaning fewer people see them.
This update will impact people and pages which use this spammy tactic to get more follower engagement. Facebook is taking this change seriously and has even created a machine learning model that can detect distinct types of Engagement Bait. [1]
So, what exactly qualifies as “Engagement Bait”? below are examples to avoid: [1]
- Tag Baiting – Asking people to tag their friends
- Comment Baiting – Asking people to comment specific answers
- Voting Baiting – Asking people to vote using reactions, comments, sharing, or any other means of representing a vote
- React Baiting – Asking people to react to the post (likes, loves, etc.)
- Share Baiting – Asking people to share the post
Links to Low-Quality Websites Will be Devalued
We all know there is a lot of spam and junk out there on the internet and Facebook wants to help users avoid this junk by devaluing links to websites that provide poor web experiences.
Facebook has reviewed thousands of pages and developed a list of common characteristics which may indicate a web page has low-value or spammy content.
How can you be sure that this update doesn’t affect your organic reach to your web pages?
- Be sure landing pages do not include disruptive, malicious, or shocking ads.
- Be sure your page load speed is up-to-par. Slow landing pages will likely be impacted.
- Be sure landing pages have substantial content, if you intend to send traffic to that landing page, make sure you put effort into it.
- Monitor bounce rates and pages per session metrics. If people are going deeper into your website, that’s a good thing.
These updates may cause pain for marketers but Facebook should be applauded for going above and beyond to constantly provide us with a greater experience. Facebook grew to its power by being the place to connect and discover new things. It’s important that social media managers maintain an awareness of Facebook updates to ensure their strategies are evolving with the changes.
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