Facebook’s new algorithm now also hurts publishers
Why this is shocking and why it isn’t
“Welcome to the 99% of companies that have already experienced this for a few years,” was one of the responses to an angry tweet about Facebook’s latest algorithm update by Dave van Aken, the head of social at Metronieuws.nl. For years, brands have been struggling to reach even some percentage of their fans, while publishers effortlessly reach a million people with a single Facebook post. And that makes sense: publishers publish real content; brands usually share commercial messages just packaged as content.
But all that might be in the past. With the latest update, the glory years of huge Facebook reach for publishers now seem to be over. Based on surveys, Facebook now prioritises the posts which would generate the most interest and would, most likely, have the most interaction. Nothing new, you would say, but Mashable had already warned publishers of a decrease in reach.
No viral hits anymore
According to van Aken, this rings true. Van Aken is head of social at Metronieuws.nl, and he sees the highest number of social interactions per article of all the Dutch news sites. “We’re seeing a 13% decrease in reach compared to even two weeks ago,” he observed. “In a few weeks we can draw real conclusions, but I can just feel it. Articles that you expect to disperse quickly aren’t spreading as fast anymore. We see no more viral hits.”
His information surprised me and I decided to ask around a bit. Nearly all the Dutch publishers I spoke to, confirmed this: the truly exploding viral success of articles seems to be a thing of the past. But for an industry that is already struggling, not everyone wanted to address the issue. Only a surprising couple of journalists were willing to go on record about the effects of the algorithm on their Facebook page. Even among the ones who chose to talk, one did so on the condition of anonymity. Case in point: the managing editor of a leading lifestyle publication. A pioneer in the magazine industry for years, this lady had noted out a tangible change since mid-February, but couldn’t quite put her finger on it then. “There is no sense to make any real sense, the results vary each week,” she said. “It seems like the more trivial content does better than the real news, and — worse — than beautiful content produced by our own, like interviews.”
Instant Articles does not deliver the goods
Any slight alteration of the Facebook algorithm can have a huge impact of article traffic. “I have already sent out an internal email to warn about a potential decline in traffic,” said Van Aken. “As the share of Facebook traffic is huge for Metro, the immediate effect is quite obviously large and striking. And surprisingly, Instant Articles do not provide a better reach. Maybe it’s a trust issue, but I even feel that they deliver even lesser reach. We recently had a post that did not exceed 9 likes. That is really, really low. “
More influence on the algorithm
Despite the changes in the algorithm, both editors do not believe that Facebook has succeeded in putting together a good newsfeed. Van Aken recommends a solution where users have more control over what they see. “I often hear complaints from users who have liked a page because they want to see updates, but then they never see anything at all. I would prefer that users can really decide what they see, for example, by choosing the posts they always want to see.”
The aforementioned managing editor wishes for more insight into the algorithm. “Who gets to decide whether our content is worth one or five stars? Who are the decisionmakers and where is their research? If Facebook would share that information with us, we could improve the feed by working with the findings, rather than bowing to the unilateral decisions taken by them. Because in the end, what people want is very simple: an interesting newsfeed.”
Experiment and focus on its own product
How are publishers going to make up for the falling reach? This time, the editor shrugged resignedly. “We’ll try lots of stuff. Experiment with everything. See what works and what doesn’t. Don’t leave any stone unturned. Fortunately, we are currently seeing an increase in direct visits and traffic from Google. This means that we are less dependent on Facebook.” Van Aken also concludes by saying that it isn’t a good idea for publishers to depend on a single external platform. “I’ve been saying this to my colleagues for years. This is why we invest in our mobile website. We show the content that the visitor wants to see, so he reads more articles and will come back more often. The first results are good, we are seeing an increase in pageviews and time per session.”
He also sees Snapchat as an alternative. “It’s more raw and much happier. That’s because you do not see each other’s reactions and we won’t get unpleasant discussions. It relatively provides a lot of interaction, and even the activations we do in the newspaper really work.”
People who share articles with friends
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the decrease in range for publishers. Social media is about conversations between people, and people really like to talk about news on Facebook. Therefore, it is quite remarkable that news publishers see less reach recently, especially now that Facebook needs their cooperation for the success of Instant Articles.
On the other hand, I expect that the qualitative study of Facebook made it further clear that users want to see posts by people. People want to talk to people, not logos. As a former social media manager at De Telegraaf, we focussed mainly on the user shares — visitors who read articles on telegraaf.nl and share them with friends.
With user shares, you are a lot less dependent on the algorithms of social platforms. I analysed a lot and those analyses have shown that user shares provide relatively more reach than Facebook posts. Where the reach of a Facebook post regularly does not exceed the number of fans of the page, the reach of a user share is mostly more than the number of friends of this user. This is quite logical: the more interactions a post gets, the more reach Facebook gives to a post. Because people like to talk to people, posts of people will always get more engagement and reach than posts by brands.
Facebook — or Twitter or Instagram for that matter — would never diminish reach of user shares, since the relevance of the networks depend on it. People want to see what their friends are sharing. And imagine, if Facebook would disappear one day, you just need to change the share buttons on your article page.
Credits image: Josse Postma
