Last week Facebook announced that they would be making updates to the News Feed ranking by downgrading posts from media outlets and brands, in favour of posts from family and friends.
This decision comes off the back a study published by Facebook last year that asked the question, “Is spending time on social media bad for us?” One of the key findings of this study was that time spent on the platform was no longer meaningful as users scroll and passively consume more than actively interacting with each other via comments, shares, messages and reminiscing on past interactions.
Further to this, a study through Carnegie Mellon University showed that, “people who sent or received more messages, comments and Timeline posts reported improvements in social support, depression and loneliness.” Those that passively consume and click like twice as many times as the average user reported worse mental health.
As a point of action on these results, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made it his new year’s resolution to fix Facebook by making sure that time spent on the platform encourages meaningful social interactions. And, the first point of call: change the News Feed to feature more posts from what people care about — each other.
A scroll through anyone’s individual News Feed will show that Facebook has a content problem, with posts from brands and publications oversaturating the News Feed. To reach a consistent roll of posts from friends and family requires some decent scroll time and, as Facebook found from its own surveys, people want to scroll less and engage more.
Ok. But how?
Via real-time data based on what a user reacts to, comments on or shares, the Facebook algorithm will prioritise and serve similar content from family and friends in the feed. Content that will be prioritised will be posts that spark discussion and prompt users to share and react, like this post from our mates at Beyond The Valley.
As the newsfeed is a limited space, this leaves less room for content from public Pages.
What about your Page’s posts?
Page traffic and interaction may decrease, but this will depend on the type of content that is produced and how people interact with it. Brands, artists and all other Pages now, more than ever, need to commit to creating and sharing content that invokes a sense of community with their audiences, and naturally prompts them to react and have meaningful discussions between one another and share these posts on their personal feeds.
What about that reach? What about those likes?
We know that reach is not an accurate measure of success; a million eyes on content means nothing if those aren’t the million people that will do something good with it.
We also know that reactions don’t lead to long-term customer value. A user that is willing to discuss, share and spend time on content is more meaningful than one that just taps.
By moving away from these measurements we will move toward analysing more long-term and meaningful metrics like time spent, the flow of actions taken on site and the rich demographics of users taking particular types of actions. This way, we can learn more about your audience and inform content creation and delivery so that we can keep delivering the good times with sharp creative that will cut through to the right people, at the right time.
How about this opt-in thingy?
People can opt-in to see more posts from Pages that they follow with the “See First in News Feed” function, but we don’t recommend putting all your eggs into that crusty old basket. Brands and artists shouldn’t be asking more from their consumers or their communities, and by requesting that they take extra steps to follow you almost implies that you aren’t won’t be delivering content that takes into consideration what they actually want to see.
So, how do you keep on winning?
Content and social media strategy needs to be informed by data.
Data is great, we love it. Digital behavioural data is one of Facebook’s strengths as a publisher and through interaction metrics, data tells us what people want, when they want it and how. These insights becoming valuable when you have a collaborative team of digital, data and creative experts at your fingertips to analyse audiences, content and data across multiple touchpoints.
Our work with Gang of Youths X LNWY.CO X Blundstone is a good example of this collaborative effort in action where social media and onsite behaviour was analysed to inform the video that we created for them. The proof is in the pudding with 184+ comments and 46+ shares between personal user accounts.
And the icing on the cake? If your content generates meaningful interactions between users like this, you will improve your Page’s chances of showing up in the feed.
Live in different places
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are media spaces that live outside the Facebook News Feed, and that these other spaces could resonate with their audiences in a more meaningful way.
No audience is the same, and by taking steps to understanding who they are, what they like, and where they engage most online, you can diversify your media placements and seamlessly fit into communities on Instagram, Messenger, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat or your own site. That way, when a platform decides to change its key approach, you can still be present and engage with audiences elsewhere.
Talk to your audience
Right now, Facebook is asking its users to speak to one another more on the platform (they’ve even made this more user friendly by making the comments section more user-friendly), which will inevitably change how people use Facebook, and will increase the expectation on brands and artists to also speak directly to them too.
We know that 53% of users that can message a Page and have a conversation with them are more likely to purchase from them, and this is likely to increase with these new News Feed changes. Brands and artist Pages will need to focus on an ongoing community management strategy that keeps discussions flowing, and generates a personalised experience for their audience.
Paid Advertising — Deliver when it matters most
Initially we expect that delivery costs will increase as there is now less space in the News Feed, but still the same amount of advertisers competing. This means, along with commiting to only delivering content that audiences can make meaningful engagements with, it will now become even more important to amplify content to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
Paid advertising can be leveraged to reach highly targeted audiences during the times and in the places that they are more likely to engage with your messaging. Consistent optimisation will ensure that costs are reduced and delivery is maximised.
Embrace it. It’s great!
We like to think of this as ‘less space for bad, more space for good’. Pages will now only benefit from content that gets people talking to one another another and content will have to inspire this.
We believe that putting our heads down to create great and intelligent content will cut-through this News Feed change.
Welcome to 2018. Let’s do this.
Thanks to Alex, Nick, Paige, Sean and Bolster
