Everything you need to know about News Feed changes 

If you carry out any sort of social media marketing for your business (and you certainly should!) you’ll likely appreciate the importance of Facebook and maintaining a Facebook presence.

In recent months, many brands have reported a decline in their post reach. This is something that professional social media marketers have been witnessing for a while now and, one of the key reasons for this is changes made to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm. Following several smaller adjustments, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a post on his own Facebook profile confirming a major update to the algorithm. Here’s everything you should know about these changes.

So, what’s the change all about?

Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook exists to bring people closer together. It wants to make it easier for its users to see posts from their connections and updates that interest them. He says that feedback suggests that ‘public content’ – updates from business pages and publishers – is getting in the way of this. As a result, some changes will be made to bring News Feed content closer to the Facebook objective.

How does Facebook decide if your update will reach News Feeds?

Facebook says that it uses a number of signals to determine where on News Feed certain posts should appear. Considerations such as how many people like a post, comment on it or share all go towards making that decision. Posts that have lots of comments or interactions are considered to be more worthwhile, and allow Facebook to predict that these updates will be of interest and therefore, deemed worthy of a good News Feed placement.

Likewise, requests from recommendations for friends are also judged to have value.

What does this mean for Business Page updates?

Facebook says that it will prioritise posts from friends and family for users – helping it to deliver its mission of bringing people closer together. With limited space available, this means the so called ‘public content’ (content from brands and other publishers) gets limited, with fewer fans seeing that content.

From a business perspective, this restricted reach will be felt directly in metrics which you may otherwise have judged to be important, including post views, reach, video views, comments and likes.

All this means that if your Facebook posts in general don’t often attract a reaction such as a like or share or a comment, you may find it harder still to boost reach and generate a Facebook presence.

You should encourage your fans to opt to receive your news in their News Feed to counter act this – they should select ‘See First In News Feed’ in preferences to ensure your updates still show to them.

You’ll also need to rethink your Facebook strategy to incorporate more content types that generate interactions (such as live video and competitions).