What Facebook’s Changes Mean for your Brand Strategy

Just about all Social Media experts point to Facebook as the best social media platform for brands to spend time and money in order to reach current and potential customers. The reason is simple: More people spend more time on Facebook then any other social media platform. So, when Facebook makes a big announcement, we listen!

In early January, Mark Zuckerberg announced his planned changes for Facebook, specifically siting a few goals, which we’ve summarized here for you:

1. Facebook users will see less public content like posts from businesses, brands and media.
2. The public content users continue to see will be held to a higher standard, to encourage meaningful interactions between people.
3. Zuckerberg feels he has a responsibility to make sure interactions with Facebook are good for people’s well-being.

So, what does that mean for brands who have relied on Facebook to connect with their customers and grow their businesses? We don’t know exactly (the new algorithms are said to be introduced over the next few months), but we do have our predictions:

1. In your personal News Feed, expect to see more baby pictures and vacation photos of friends and family and less posts from news sources and businesses.
2. Organic Reach for posts by businesses and brands will reduce (potentially a lot!).
3. Meaningful interactions on Facebook are measured by engagement (likes, comments, shares), so business pages with high engagement rate will continue to succeed in organic reach.
4. We will see a rise in brands who specifically request engagement in their posts, such as “Comment on this post if you are watching the Olympics”. Be careful! Facebook will actually penalize these businesses with their algorithms because they don’t see that as meaningful, but instead view it as forced.

Given all of this, what is our strategy and advice to brands?

1. Focus on creative quality content, not volume. Each post should be engaging in some way; funny/heartfelt/informative/helpful/entertaining and encourage conversation. For example, ask a question in a post, ask for input/advice and try to include topics and events that are timely and will spark opinions from your Facebook fans.
2. Encourage your current clients to follow your page and click “See First” to ensure you remain in their News Feed. The changes in Facebook algorithms will be apparent to users, so being proactive in asking your current customers to not only like your page but also to click “See First” isn’t too intrusive, it’s smart business. (The “See First” button is an option under the Following dropdown under your business page cover photo.)
3. Increase your Ad budget. Since your organic reach will reduce, ensure you have a continued presence on Facebook to the right audience with Facebook ads.
4. Make more videos! As we have written in the past, videos have high engagement on Facebook, so investing in video content, whether it be with your time or money, will be worth it.

As the Facebook algorithms are rolled out, we will keep you updated to these changes and advice. Happy Posting!