Everything You Need To Know About Facebook's New Algorithm
With over 2.2 billion users, Facebook has become an advertiser’s fantasy over the past couple of years. However on January 11th, Mark Zuckerberg took to his Facebook page to announce some interesting changes that were coming to the social media platform. More specifically, he announced changes that would affect how we interact with brands on the Facebook Newsfeed moving forward. As an agency, we are always on the pulse of what's happening in the social sphere, so we dug a little deeper into the changes to see how they may impact our efforts and the efforts we put forth on behalf of our clients.
The moral of Zuck’s story: person-to-person connection is more important than person-to-page connection. The new Facebook algorithm (the “meaningful interactions” update) will prioritize content that prompts conversation between friends and family, and will demote content posted by public Pages and brands.
What does that mean for brands on the social media platform?
As the changes start to roll out, brands will most likely see a decrease in organic reach, watch time, and referral traffic. Users will also probably spend less time on Facebook; though Zuckerberg hopes the time users do spend on the platform will be “time well spent.” Quality over quantity is Facebook’s new motto.
This means the Newsfeed will likely start to show more pictures of your friends’ wedding shower, and fewer posts from Buzzfeed, Vice and ESPN.
Should brands be worried?
With the focus shifting to more meaningful content, it will be up to agencies and in-house brand teams to develop better, conversation-starting content.
Facebook wants to see content that evokes emotion and ignites conversations within a post’s comment section. Shares, comments and reactions are being deemed “active interactions” and are very important to page performance with the new algorithm. Video content is also being deemed more “quality” than the typical photo post, so expect to see more brand videos on Facebook going forward.
As long as brands, and the agencies behind them, have a true understanding of whom their audience is and what types of content their audience wants to interact with, they shouldn’t be worried.
Facebook is now a "pay-to-play" community for brands
Over the past few years, Facebook has become more and more of a “pay-to-play” environment. And now more than ever is that ringing true! It will be important for brands, moving forward, to have intelligent strategy behind their paid media efforts. At Zehnder, we have paid media specialists who work hand-in-hand with our social media team to ensure we have the best strategy in place for growing companies beyond Facebook.
It’s always an exciting time in the world of social media! We try to bring our clients the latest and greatest, like our piece on Facebook Bots and how they can work for you. Want to learn more about top social media practices, and how our team can help your brand’s digital presence soar?
