For many, there’s a sense of relief and triumph. The role of audience development is often misunderstood as posting links to social platforms. Now, suddenly, audience development is seen as far more strategic. But with great power comes great responsibility.
For Kurt Gessler, deputy digital editor at the Chicago Tribune, there was “panic initially,” followed by vindication and, he allowed, “a little smugness.” That’s because the Tribune only posts about 10 percent of its content on Facebook, and its audience development experts do other tasks in the newsroom so they’re not isolated or working at cross-purposes with editorial.
“It reinforces a lot of the things we and others have been saying,” Gessler said of the news feed change, which Facebook said will prioritize users’ posts over news. “We were always much more interested in quality over quantity. We were never firehosing into Facebook.”
Arguably, the role of audience development — some prefer the fancier “audience engagement” — is more important than ever. The old time-tested practice of using Facebook to drive massive traffic on the cheap to build audiences and fulfill ad campaigns is going away. Building audience in a sustainable way means mastering other distributed platforms and getting direct traffic, too.
One audience exec at a major publisher likened the algorithm change to “the end of an abusive relationship. Facebook abused us for so long and we just kept going back to them, and you finally are like, ‘OK, I’m going to walk away.’”
“I think this gives them more freedom to not worry about the click but think about the engagement,” Keith Hernandez, svp of strategy at Bleacher Report, said of audience development teams. Audience development’s importance at the sports publisher has already been growing; the branded content team has been bringing audience staffers into its pitch meetings for the past six months to advise on editorial trends.
If audience people are more important, they also face more insecurity and pressure than ever. Some will have to answer for their reliance on Facebook. (Cue the schadenfreude among publishers that say they saw the writing on the wall and already weaned themselves off Facebook dependence.) They’re aware that some people think their jobs could be done just as well by tweet-writing robots. They have to figure out new rules for success at a time when Facebook reach is declining.
Facebook has announced it will prioritize “meaningful, social interactions” within the news feed in algorithm updates, in order to better connect users to meaningful posts between friends and family.
What does this means for marketers who run business Facebook pages? Facebook will show less of that content, or what it calls “public content,” including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.
If this has you frightened, it’s not quite time to jump ship yet. Yes, it’s a pretty big change for your Facebook organic marketing and engagement efforts, for now.
The good news is we’ve got some ways for you to prepare and shift your Facebook engagement efforts.
Here are things you should know — and do — about Facebook’s News Feed changes.
Create Meaningful Social Interactions
The bottom line for marketers is meaningful, social interactions are now the most important thing in terms what Facebook likes to serve up prominently in a news feed. Facebook announced the news feed changes in a blog post by Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook’s news feed. The ranking changes are the first step in, “making updates to ranking so people have more opportunities to interact with the people they care about,” states Mosseri in the aforementioned blog. According to him, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease.
User feedback suggests public content posts from businesses, brands and media is, “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post. So Zuckerberg and team Facebook made a major change in that product teams at the social network will shift focus from helping users find relevant content to helping users find more “meaningful social interactions.”
“For example,” Zuckerberg says, “there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We’ve seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”
Recognize What Facebook Likes
You should know what Facebook will be watching out for in terms of meaningful posts from Pages. And you should brace for which kind of posts will get less exposure in the News Feed. “Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution,” Mosseri said. “Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect… Using “engagement-bait” to goad people into commenting on posts is not a meaningful interaction, and we will continue to demote these posts in news feed.”
Keep this material in mind when crafting business page posts:
Facebook uses signals like how many people react to, comment on or share posts to determine how high they appear in news feed.
Facebook will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in the news feed. These are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.
Facebook will prioritize posts from friends and family over public content, consistent with its news feed values.
Your loyal Page followers can still see more posts from your Page if they choose “See First in News Feed Preferences.”
No Impact on Paid Advertising
Marketers and advertisers need not worry about paid-advertising efforts on Facebook. No changes to ads ranking for Facebook will occur through this change. Facebook’s Ads auction already optimizes for user value. Facebook’s systems will continue to take into account relevancy and feedback to deliver ads to the right people based on a company’s business objectives. Engagement is a very small part of ads ranking. Facebook relies on many other data points to determine what ads people see to ensure relevancy and value.
Use Your Page as ‘Hub for Thoughtful Content’
Kristin Johnson, director of communications for Sprout Social, told CMSWire that marketers should reframe Facebook within their strategy and reach beyond their own content and resources. “Instead of using your Facebook Page as another house for owned resources and links use it as a hub for thoughtful content and conversation around the topics your company and community care about,” she says.
Johnson cited Sprout Social research that confirms that 68 percent of people want to see brands joining in on conversations, giving marketers the opportunity to be more creative with their engagement strategies. “That is the type of interactive content people — and, in turn, platforms — actually respond to. This engagement-first approach will not only help your brand stand out, it will also carve out a defined purpose and opportunity for Facebook moving forward,” says Johnson.
Be a Video Hero
Stacy Maynard, social media strategist, says businesses need to focus on both live video and uploading native recorded video. Facebook is giving more visibility to video based posts. “We are seeing a shift to Digital TV and made for Social TV. Everyone has a TV camera in their pocket so ensure you find the right platform for your video goals. Focus on video for your Facebook feed. Video is the fastest growing ad format and by 2020 video will make up 80 percent of consumer Internet traffic,” says Maynard.
To break through the algorithmic challenge, try using live streaming and stories in order to get your business more news feed love. Facebook Live video is watched three times longer than regular videos and shows up higher in search results, according to Maynard.
You should also consider live videos simply because Facebook likes live videos. Stats make it clear, on average they get six times as many interactions as regular videos, according to Mosseri. “Though some have predicted that branded video will be hit by these news feed changes I don’t think it will be. Live and short-form video are the best-performing categories of content on Facebook for brands in my experience,” says Cappy Popp, principal and co-founder of Thought Labs.
Become Relevant
Greg Ng, vice president of digital engagement at PointSource, a Globant company, called Facebook’s change to the algorithm a huge wake-up call for brands. Brands that have traditionally existed with questionable ROI based on Likes and Shares in their Facebook marketing now need to “scramble to become relevant.”
Increase investment in influencer marketing, Ng suggested. For example, a makeup brand may struggle to be prioritized in a customer’s Facebook feed. “But, if a friend receives a sample and posts about it for their network, the brand may receive a higher positioning in the feed, thus more influence, in theory. This will create a need for Facebook to clearly define the rules around disclosure and paid endorsements, so brands can’t abuse marketing opportunities with influencers,” says Ng.
Change up your content strategy. “Without the luxury of showing up on a feed in a timely manner, content will have to be more engaging, more shareable and more urgent than ever before,” Ng says.
Consider Marketing Channel Alternatives
Nate Elliott, former Forrester analyst and principal of Nineteen Insights, suggests marketers should treat Facebook like any other paid media channel. “Give your Facebook budget to your media buying team so they can decide when to invest on Facebook and when those dollars will work better in search or display. And rather than optimizing for engagement, optimize for traditional success metrics like awareness and conversions,” says Elliott.
Elliott also suggests investing in relationship marketing channels that you control, like email. “It was always risky putting customer relationships in the hands of a third party. Encourage fans to sign up for emails, not to follow you on Facebook. If you have their email address you know that 90 percent of your messages will get through.”
User Interaction the Key
Focus on content that encourages, maybe requires, user interaction, according to Popp. “Making sure your content encourages (interaction) will go a long way to mitigating the difficulties these changes bring. Same goes for shareable content. Always a Holy Grail, true, but there’s nothing that will limit users from sharing branded content with their networks. User-shared content is ‘in-network’. It’s all hypothetical at the moment. … For marketers, experimentation, A/B testing, and rising costs are are going to come into play. We’re all in the dark at this point,” says Popp.
Feature Image:
Businesses need to be prepared for news ways to show up prominently in Facebook’s News Feed through organic posts. PHOTO: English106
Facebook’s decision to re-prioritize its News Feed to favour “social interactions” over other forms of content may please its users, but will be challenging for brands.
In a post last night, Facebook announced that it would be introducing changes to its news feed algorithm in the coming year to ensure that posts by friends and family on Facebook appear higher in the news feed.
“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content—posts from businesses, brands, and media—is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” wrote Facebook chairman and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.
The changes Facebook is rolling out to combat this will mean that users will start to see less public content such as posts from businesses, brands, and media. The platform claims that the content users see will be the material that “encourages meaningful interactions between people.”
This move may be detrimental to brands, businesses, and publishers and will even limit Facebook’s short-term growth, but is ultimately beneficial for the social network in the long-term, said Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Group.
“The company was understandably focused on driving user growth over the years, although former Facebook executives have recently described negative impacts on consumers from those efforts. To the extent that those criticisms are valid, action is warranted,” Wieser said, adding that time spent by users on Facebook had started to decline prior to this decision.
Impact on brands
As Facebook takes these steps and invests in premium content to improve its user-experience, so too must brands on Facebook look to create better content, advised Greg Allum, head of social at Jellyfish.
“We [marketers] need to be clever with our content and understand what resonates with the consumer and why. More importantly, we all need to become better media planners,” Allum said.
Facebook will be looking to offset the hit it will take to near-term revenue from advertisers by stoking Instagram’s growth, Wieser noted. The platform will also be able to use this new approach to focus on higher-paying advertisers, and using more refined targeting methods to satisfy advertiser goals with less inventory.
Publishers may be most affected
In the end though, media owners are likely to be the most affected by this update, commented Allum.
While Facebook’s announcement may, on the surface, appear to tackle the issue of the spread of fake news and click-bait, that will ultimately depend on a user’s friendship circles. This may, in fact, increase the filter bubble effect as users only see posts shared predominantly by the people they interact with the most.
Publishers, who are already challenged on the platform, may not agree to continue investing their media budgets in Facebook with this change.
However, Allum believes that while publishers will test and learn on other channels, they will ultimately return to Facebook.
“The lure of a captive audience will be too much for them, but they will shift their strategy and concentrate on creating less but bigger and better pieces of content, which in turn will improve the user experience for consumers. Although brands could see an increase in the cost to advertise as the channel becomes more competitive,” he said.
Financial Times chief executive, John Ridding, criticized Facebook’s update as not particularly helpful to quality publishers.
“As a long-standing publisher of quality journalism, the FT welcomes moves to recognize and support trusted and reliable news and analysis. But a sustainable solution to the challenges of the new information ecosystem requires further measure—in particular, a viable subscription model on platforms that enables publishers to build a direct relationship with readers and to manage the terms of access to their content,” he said. “Without that—as the large majority of all new online advertising spend continues to go to the search and social media platforms—quality content will no longer be a choice or an option. And that would be the worst outcome for all.”
