If there’s one thing we can always count on, it’s that Facebook will keep changing things, and the most recent set of changes involves how the news feed algorithm decides what stories to show at the top of a user’s feed page. Previously, the average Facebook user read 57% of the stories in their news feeds, but older content got lost in the shuffle as users failed to scroll down far enough to see the other stories.
Now, with the new algorithm, Facebook mixes some older content back in with the newer stories, based on things like number of likes and shares, number of comments a story receives, level of previous interaction with the friend or page in question, and number of people who are hiding a particular piece of content.
So what does all this mean for marketers? The most important change is that timing is not as crucial as it once was. Figuring out the perfect timing for Facebook posts often involved complex metrics that measured engagement against time of day and demographic, but now, with older content having the potential to “come back to life,” the focus simply shifts back to the creation of content that people find interesting and relevant.
In other words, even if timing was starting to share the throne with content, content is definitely back to being the one and only king. As a marketer, you don’t have to worry so much anymore about posting updates at the “perfect” time, and instead you can concentrate your efforts on posting content that will get liked, shared and commented on so much, that it keeps appearing in the news feeds of those who may not have seen the update the first time.
This also means that posting spammy updates will become less tempting for businesses, as the algorithm now penalizes updates that too many people have hidden. The emphasis really is on relevant, interesting content, and the only thing to play around with is the nature of that content, and perhaps the format of it. For example, you might experiment with photos versus plain text updates, or videos, or whatever else you like to post, to see which kinds of updates perform better.
Have you noticed any changes in audience engagement since the new news feed algorithm went into effect? Has it indeed made your audience more responsive and reactive?
