One of the main reasons people login to Facebook is to see latest stories and trends in their News Feeds. Normally, we don’t want to see everything while scrolling down our Home Page of Facebook. Some people prefer to keep themselves updated with latest gadgets or business news and others want to enjoy Entertainment videos. Depending upon the likes and interaction with certain posts and stories, a new Facebook algorithm has been announced that will help people to keep themselves updated with the stories they are interested in.
Why Does Facebook Keep Changing its Algorithms and Marketing Strategies?
People are quite concerned about this constant change and improvement in News feeds and marketing algorithms of Facebook. According to the company, this change will help people to go through the most important and appropriate stories in their news feeds rather than unwanted stories – going beyond the most common metrics of likes, shares and status updates.
If we give a second thought to what made Facebook so important over the past few years since its inception, the only reason why this social networking site is booming worldwide is because of its Newsfeed feature.
In short, we can say that this feature has finally become Facebook’s epicenter. Over the past few years, the site that was actually a controversial platform has become the most invaluable marketing billboard for organizations, celebrities, brands and NGOs etc.
This milestone has been achieved by the endless efforts and strategies being implemented/tested by the engineers at Facebook. Various algorithms and metrics have been announced and launched time to time so that people can see what they are interested in. Automated software fueled in ‘News Feeds’ actually helped the engineers serve users with posts they are more likely to interact with.
Content Distribution by New Facebook Marketing Algorithms
The huge change in Facebook algorithms was recently announced by a press release by the company itself:
The impact of these changes on your page’s distribution will vary considerably depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity. In some cases, post reach and referral traffic could potentially decline. Overall, pages should continue to post things that your audience finds meaningful and continue using our Page post best practices.
Earlier, Facebook had certain rules that prevented users from seeing multiple posts from same source (user or page) but they are relaxing this rule to let people enjoy the content they are more likely to see. It has also been anticipated by this change that Facebook has been busy making deals with publishers/media advertising companies to make them use Facebook as a primary source of marketing rather than any other website or platform.
The two salient features of this change were trending topics and timing of most liked/shared content.
Trending Topics:
This new feature will allow a Facebook user to see the latest trend on Facebook. For example, if a user is watching Grammy Awards or a football match and updated this status on Facebook, he will then see all the latest happenings and pictures of this trend on Facebook. This will enhance his experience of seeing latest updates on these events on his News Feed. According to a survey, the user experience has been increased to 6% by sharing posts, likes, comments and clicks through “Trending Topics” algorithm.
Image shows latest Trends on Facebook linked to User’s area of interest
Timing of Most Liked/Shared Content:
The next change in Facebook algorithms seems very nominal but it has changed the whole meaning of marketing on Facebook. To understand and utilize this algorithm, we need to stay focused on the time during which most likes, comments or shares were received on a certain Facebook post. Hence, accurate timing matters a lot while posting content on Facebook because this will engage people as expected.
If more people are interacting within an hour after posting the content then it means the post was the most interesting or trending topic during that time. Based on this algorithm, the post is more likely to appear on top of the News feeds.
Effects of the New Facebook Algorithms on Business Pages:
There are high chances that these algorithms won’t make much of a difference in the reach and engagement of business pages. Facebook itself clarified that if a business page is about the “Trending Topic” then it will surely gain more engagement and reach but not all the trends can be related to your business page.
In contrary to this, even business pages (just to game the news feeds) are posting updates that are irrelevant to their business. For instance, you might have seen several small business pages sharing pictures of Showbiz celebrities or the latest movies just to gain more reach and likes.
Hence, the new algorithms might seem fruitful to Facebook but small business owners and marketers are suffering from it. However, we expect a swift update to penalize those who game the system in this way.
So in the end, even if a business page sticks to its terms and policies, the marketer of the page needs to be very cautious and keen while posting pictures that can co-relate their business and the latest trends in a precise way for effective marketing.
