Social media marketers, beware! There’s a new Facebook algorithm that’s going to impact how you market your brand and its products on Facebook.
If you and your marketing team have gotten comfortable on this particular channel, it’s time to wake up and smell the news feed. Posts are going to be arranged in a much different way than they ever were before, and brand posts are going to take a back seat.
What’s The New Facebook Algorithm All About?
In response to recent backlash that Facebook has faced in response to the growing number of “fake news” articles and pages, Facebook has decided that it’s time for a change. And brands are going to suffer.
From this point forward, Facebook posts by brands will be filtered out in favor of organic posts by real people. Personal news feeds will be full of posts by friends and family — while posts from favorite brands will likely remain on their own Facebook pages.
This is a result of the new factors that go into crafting your own personal news feeds. Now, posts will be prioritized based on comments, shares, reactions and time spent looking at and interacting with a given post.
Not only this, but Facebook will continue to do away with chronological ordering of your friends’ posts in favor of a news feed catered to each individual based on comments, likes and interests.
In a post written by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the reasons behind the change were outlined:
We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness. But 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.
Facebook wants to bring its community together. It wants to bring people together and get them to connect more with one another. They want to get rid of fake news, end hate and eliminate the negativity that has fallen over the brand.
And while this sentiment isn’t exactly new, it does directly affect third-party organizations and brands that use Facebook to market themselves.
So where does that leave your social media marketing strategy?
What Brands Can Do To Get Their Content Noticed
- Create meaningful content
Facebook is going to put a focus on meaningful interactions, which means your content needs to make an impact on your audience. Going forward, you might have to shift your own content strategy. Because content can no longer be for your brand, but for your audience.
There are around 183 million active Facebook users in the United States and Canada everyday — that’s a huge audience you can possibly interact with.
You need to understand your audience and understand what content they want. If you’ve never used native analytics to understand your audience, now is the time to do it. Otherwise your content will suffer — and so will your brand.
For example, Dove Men fills their Facebook page not with product promotions and steals-n-deals, but videos about fatherhood, and timely manifestos about strength in victory and defeat synced with the NCAA March Madness Tournament. These are topics that hit home with their target audience, but also go a little deeper to strike a more emotional chord and build brand loyalty in a more “human” way.
You have to make sure your content serves a purpose, or it will never get the right eyes on it.
- Create content that starts a conversation
Not only does your content have to make an impact, it has to compel people to act. It has to make them want to answer a question, make a comment or ask a question of their own. This will help boost your posts to the top of your audiences’ news feed.
But how can brands do that? By creating more engaging forms of content. And this content includes video, polls, live video and other interactive media that will get people involved. Your content has to be compelling. It has to be cool. It has to be animated and it has to be interactive.
For instance, 8 billion videos — or 100 million hours of video — are watched on Facebook every day. Video content is a major seller for Facebook users, so you have to know what it takes to create this kind of highly-prized content. And considering Facebook is the best platform for video — 8.4 times higher than other channels — you’re seriously missing out if you’re not using it to your advantage.
Insider is a brand that creates phenomenally stunning video that captivates and inspires. Whether they’re featuring the biggest cheese capitals around the world, or documenting the history of tattoo art, this brand’s videos regularly get hundreds of thousands of views.
Your audience is bombarded by boring text posts and dull images — don’t be one with the masses.
- Utilize influencers
Another way around the new Facebook algorithm is by utilizing real people to share your content. This is where influencers come in.
Influencer marketing has boomed in recent years, with more brands turning to and collaborating with influencers who have a large circle of dedicated followers. They have their own personal brands, but they themselves aren’t big corporations or institutions.
For instance, 70 percent of millennial consumers say they are definitely influenced recommendations doled out by peers and respected individuals. And 30 percent of consumers value insights from non-celebrity influencers over actual celebrities.
This means that they have a wide audience or people who care about what they think and say. They can make an immense impact on individuals and can work around the new Facebook news feed determining factors. The new algorithm gives priority to real people, meaning that influencers can get your content out to more people, quicker.
A brand rocking the new influencer marketing trend is Fiji water. Recently, they partnered with Danielle Bernstein — the owner of the We Wore What blog. The brand and blogger teamed up to create the #Bodyworewhat campaign. In this campaign, Bernstein stars in eight-minute workout videos with a personal trainer to promote Fiji Water.
Fiji used this influencer to its advantage, showing Fiji as a brand that cares about health and hydration. And this campaign is still going strong.
The New Facebook Algorithm And Beyond
The new Facebook algorithm might sound like a death sentence for brands, but that doesn’t mean your social media marketing strategy is doomed. There are still ways you can engage and interact with your target audiences. You can do this by:
- Creating meaningful and emotional content
- Asking questions and starting conversations with your content
- Utilizing influencers to help promote your content from a real person
Just because your job is going to get harder on Facebook, doesn’t mean you should give up. In fact, this can actually be a good thing! The new algorithm tests your creativity and pushes you to think in ways you’ve never had to before on social media. But by following these helpful tips, your content is sure to succeed.
