As you may know, earlier this year Facebook announced some new and substantial changes.
Facebook Algorithm Changes
These changes re-established Facebook’s commitment to the “social” part of social networking.
“You’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.” — MARK ZUCKERBERG
Like so many other businesses who have been working hard at building a following and marketing their products and services on Facebook, you may be asking what this means to your business.
In short, it means developing a Facebook marketing plan that incorporates the philosophy of quality over quantity and a focus on “meaningful interactions.”
Facebook categorizes interactions with your posted content into two categories:
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Active Interactions
Which are commenting and sharing.
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Passive interactions
Which are likes and click-throughs.
Actions which require more effort are more meaningful or of a higher quality when measured by the Facebook algorithm, and contribute to what Facebook considers “quality time” on the platform.
Facebook ranks interactions with your posts as follows:
- Comments
- Reactions (everything but the LIKE)
- Comment replies
- Sharing links over Messenger to a group of friends
- Engagement on shares
There are some additional ranking signals which are less important, but still worth mentioning:
- Average time spent on content
- When your content is posted
- Story type (status update, photo, link, video, or live video) (be aware that currently Facebook favors live video)
- Completeness of page profile
- How informative the post is as related to your audience
What this means for Facebook Algorithm Changes
What all of this means is that as your marketing partner, we need to make certain we are creating and posting the very best content for you to have the highest likelihood for interaction. That means searching the web for connected stories which help paint a picture of your brand targeted to your most engaged audience via Facebook insights. As well as creating your brand’s owned content, such as graphics and video.
Going forward we recommend a revised schedule of posting to Facebook three days a week. Although we realize that it is fewer posts, it will actually require more time and expertise to create these posts, making certain that they are relevant to your audience. Additionally, there is evidence that posting more often, without interaction, may actually hurt your organic reach.
It is our goal to take advantage of whatever organic (free) reach we can for as long as we can. However, most experts agree that organic reach is likely to drop to zero in the very near future. The projected decrease in organic reach is whey it is important that we also begin to develop a strategy for your Facebook marketing. Additionally, now is the time to begin developing a plan to incorporate additional social platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest.
Pinterest provides a great opportunity to plan a keyword based strategy as it continues to grow and become a visual search tool, as opposed to a social network. Instagram provides an opportunity to market your business with visual content, microblogging and hashtags. This is a social networking platform that allows us to tell the story of your business using an image based strategy paired with hashtags (keyword search).
We are looking forward to developing a personal social media marketing strategy based on each brand’s individual needs.