Last Updated on 17/07/2024 by Caroline McAuley
Changes in Facebook’s Algorithm. On the 11th January 2018 Facebook’s public announcement about its latest changes to its news feed algorithm brought swift reaction from social media, agencies and others in the sector—and most of that reaction hasn’t been exactly positive. As a company that uses Facebook for a wide range of clients our viewpoint wasn’t exactly negative but at the same time we did question internally whether this is a PR exercise that has or hasn’t got the majority of marketers now jumping to Facebook’s tunes in and scratching their heads at the same time.
The social network announced in a Newsroom post by vice president of News Feed Adam Mosseri and in an accompanying Facebook post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the algorithm is being tweaked to “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people” and to “prioritize posts from friends and family over public content.”
So what does that mean for companies and brands relying on or even using Facebook as a channel for their messaging and even main channel as a revenue stream? With a concrete strategy and awareness of audiences already most brands already practising good content placement and timing will whether any storm.
As ever we believe in diversification and as a small company with a large array of client messaging our goal has always been to use and monitor several channels and play to the strengths that work best for each sector channel but always from a strong source, and content related. Bottom line, if you have been relying on Facebook solely as a revenue generator and this news is causing panic, then time to change your game.
Click baiters begone, that’s the message from Facebook.
Results are (we review across the board first hand in several sectors in addition to industry figures) that Facebook has seen a steady decline in referrals and the chase for likes and clicks has become somewhat questionable in its authenticity of what that means to companies anymore looking at their bottom line unless it can be measured directly.
Building an audience that companies can nurture and engage in meaningful engagements is exactly what Facebook appears to be looking for going forward in context of news feeds that are bombarded with commercialism and ‘fake news’. Significantly and maybe with some idealism it could be bigger brands that move to better content that is relative to the user and unlikely to be the user themselves that actively become involved. Regardless of intent from publishers Facebook assumes an authority to censor and push irrelevant news out of the way leaning to a nostalgic era when the platform was as it states, ” For friends and family.”
As a company that looks to make sure that our clients and their brands are represented correctly and with sustainable engaging content we have never really advocated attempting to achieve substantial growth by limiting it to Facebook feeds or the hard sell, rather feed Facebook meaningful content for audiences, integrity being absolute. Undoubtedly the algorithm has publishers jumping to Facebook’s tune at one time in the past but with so many other platforms currently and some certainly favoured overs for storing and sharing content this could be Facebook clutching victory from the jaws of defeat.
Big changes nobody really likes in advertising and marketing. These days marketing is a serious arm if not head and torso of most businesses and changing to the beat of a new drum suddenly nobody likes to do on the promise of a better world predicted by a global corporation. Crucial is, at least from our Agency outlook that content is the focus and the recognition that so much bad content has deterred users from a platform that jumped head first into the advertising revenue model.
So, the future for marketers on Facebook? In depth marketing and advertising is effective where justified but content and integrity will rule. Watch the Facebook Video announcement and decide for yourself or talk to us on projects@icaruscommunications.co.uk / client projects
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/
