This has been on the cards for a long time and it’s finally happening. Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg wrote this on Facebook.

Businesses and brands need to be aware this going to have a huge effect on their organic reach. The other thing to be careful of is what you are posting on Facebook. If you don’t get any engagement you will be penalised for future posts. So rather be absolutely sure what you post is going to work! This is definitely going to improve the newsfeed and clean up the experience for users. Facebook lost focus on the user experience and now Zuckerberg has realised this and is making the changes at a rapid rate. The good news is that Facebook is still keeping pages in the newsfeed, for now anyway. But you can be assured that in time pages will move to their own feed; be it a pages feed or the tested explore tab. I wrote a previous post about ‘The Rise of the Social Algorithms’  the next one to watch out for is Instagram. They recently introduced an algorithm and you can be assured they will want more brands and businesses to pay for visibility in their newsfeed.

There is no need to panic, but, if you don’t have a Facebook advertising paid strategy, now is the time to look at your options. The questions you need to ask is do you understand how Facebook advertising works? The boost button is not the most effective way to advertise your posts. Do you know how the Facebook Ads Manager/Power Editor/Ads App works? Do you understand all the metrics Facebook supplies? If not, now is the time to learn and do it fast, otherwise you could reach out to an expert.

Now I wish Facebook would tighten its control on the adverts being shown in the newsfeed. I think they will because of the Russian accounts they found running ads during the American election. On the Isle of Man, I see so many crappy ads. This is because people don’t understand the platform and don’t monitor their campaigns using the tools provided. Then people have the audacity to say Facebook doesn’t work.

What content works best on Facebook? Tell your story on your Facebook page. Create live videos and articles about your journey in business that people engage with. Share pictures that will be shared and liked, but more importantly, these will need to create conversations. The critical part is engagement, Facebook is not happy with people passively reading articles or watching videos as this may not be good for your state of mind. Now the way Facebook is going to rate engagement is going even deeper, no longer will it just be comments and likes but people typing out a long and thoughtful reply to your content. It all boils down to the content you produce and how you post it. Stop selling with every single post you share!  Think about the content you create for each of the social networks you use, it’s not one size fits all! If you are a business or consultant that offers social media strategy I would be concerned for you if your clients don’t have a paid social advertising strategy!

Now if you are a school that doesn’t use Facebook advertising, it would be a good time to create a group for your school. Facebook has been improving groups and encouraging pages to create groups for specific interests. Think about your business/brand or community and decide what needs to happen, think about it carefully.

I am excited about these changes as it shows that Zuckerberg is always looking about for the community of users on Facebook. This video below by Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed gives more information about the thought process and objectives they want to achieve.

Thanks for reading.