Chances are you’ve heard that Facebook is changing their News Feed settings to improve the consumer experience based on feedback from user surveys.
Starting sometime this month, Facebook will be reducing visibility of posts that are “too professional.” Moving forward, Pages that post promotional content can expect their organic reach to fall significantly over time. So, what can you do about it?
Employ a social media strategy that generates content that is not deemed “too promotional” according to Facebook’s algorithms. Apparently, surveys have found three things that make organic posts seem “too promotional” to users:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
Okay, Facebook, challenge accepted.
In theory, this would mean that witty, creative, insightful posts would continue to garner the same reach as they have in the past. Of course, many people suspect Facebook is simply rewarding companies who spend advertising dollars since that’s now the only way to ensure your content is being viewed by your followers and potential fans.
The reality is that while I suspect that was a huge bonus for Facebook, I highly doubt that this is a purely self-serving move. As a consumer, I completely support algorithms that improve the user experience and ensure brands are proving me useful content in my News Feed. Of course, I am very likely to unfollow any company that abuses the privilege of appearing in my feed, and one hopes that concern is enough reason for businesses to hold themselves to higher standards of content creation.