You might have been hearing a lot about the latest Facebook algorithm updates, and been wondering what is this all about.
Essentially what is happening is that the News Feed algorithm will prioritize posts from your friends and bury stuff from publishers, pages and brands.
Up until now, a big way to quickly grow pages was through "engagement baiting", which works so well in general on social medias, as it allowed posts to have inflated engagement rates and consequently be shown to more and more people. But Facebook is tracking down on pages that use "engagement baits" and decreasing their reach.
(expect this might follow to Instagram sometime in the future, as most FB algorithm features have been doing)
This means that you will stop seeing so many funny videos, memes, engagement bait, and will start seeing more of what are your friends doing and having more "Meaningful social interactions".
It also means that Ads and ad space will likely become more important now more than ever, as pages will need ads to reach their target audience.
There will be more necessity for advertisements, the price for ads might increase, as well as the offer, but these are just predictions. It might also mean that businesse's attention on Facebook should probably start to prioritize conversion over growth.
Basically:
- Users will see more updates from family and friends.
- Users will see less posts from businesses, brands and media (pages).
- Pages reach in general will decrease.
- Pages that don't get a lot of reach, will see even less reach.
- Pages will benefit from creating meaningful conversations (engagement).(live video still seems to be one of the most engaging things you can do)
- Engagement bait will be detrimental to reach.
Zuckerberg himself said that these changes might decrease the amount of time people spend on Facebook, which lead to a sudden drop in their stock share.
But let's be honest, Facebook wouldn't do something that wouldn't be beneficial to the platform in the long run. Which means that, even if the short-term revenue might decrease, the changes should be better for Facebook in the long-term.
Zuckerberg and Facebook research teams understand human and social behavior better than anyone else in the world. We know that Facebook is capable of manipulating our emotions, and the most recent research for Facebook itself suggests that connecting with people we care about makes us happy, while binging on videos and other forms of content, even if entertaining or informative, might not be so healthy for us.
I haven't really found or anyone else talking about this specifically, but personally, what I believe is happening is the following:
Facebook knows perfectly that they have a big influence on the way our brains work, especially towards internet stimuli, since a lot of people spend a big majority of their browsing time on facebook.
Our attention towards individual posts is less than it has ever been. We get exposed to dozens of engagement bait posts, advertisements and commercials per minute, and not only is our attention diluted through them, our brain is optimized to ignore most of these unwanted stimuli.
I believe that in the long term, by delivering us with more frequent high quality content, facebook wants our focus to go back in time, so that we start giving more value and paying more attention once again to individual posts, like people did 10 to 15 years ago.
All of this, so that once a targeted advertisement is shown to us in the news feed, there is an increased chance that people may put more interest and focus into them as well, instead of straight up ignoring it.
Facebook is changing.
Great deal... but isn't it always?
Indeed, as usual it's up to us, marketeers, advertisers, growth-hackers.. to embrace the changes and adapt to them.
We can always figure out how to engage consumers in new ways! That's what we do!
Don't feel bad because change is coming. This is the digital age, and part of technology is that its bound to become irrelevant. You know that better than anyone. As always, don't put all your eggs in the same basket.
Continue your education on marketing and be glad that you are ahead of everyone else in tech.
Being here and reading this means that you are already winning!
Essentially what is happening is that the News Feed algorithm will prioritize posts from your friends and bury stuff from publishers, pages and brands.
Up until now, a big way to quickly grow pages was through "engagement baiting", which works so well in general on social medias, as it allowed posts to have inflated engagement rates and consequently be shown to more and more people. But Facebook is tracking down on pages that use "engagement baits" and decreasing their reach.
(expect this might follow to Instagram sometime in the future, as most FB algorithm features have been doing)
This means that you will stop seeing so many funny videos, memes, engagement bait, and will start seeing more of what are your friends doing and having more "Meaningful social interactions".
It also means that Ads and ad space will likely become more important now more than ever, as pages will need ads to reach their target audience.
There will be more necessity for advertisements, the price for ads might increase, as well as the offer, but these are just predictions. It might also mean that businesse's attention on Facebook should probably start to prioritize conversion over growth.
Basically:
- Users will see more updates from family and friends.
- Users will see less posts from businesses, brands and media (pages).
- Pages reach in general will decrease.
- Pages that don't get a lot of reach, will see even less reach.
- Pages will benefit from creating meaningful conversations (engagement).(live video still seems to be one of the most engaging things you can do)
- Engagement bait will be detrimental to reach.
Zuckerberg himself said that these changes might decrease the amount of time people spend on Facebook, which lead to a sudden drop in their stock share.
But let's be honest, Facebook wouldn't do something that wouldn't be beneficial to the platform in the long run. Which means that, even if the short-term revenue might decrease, the changes should be better for Facebook in the long-term.
Zuckerberg and Facebook research teams understand human and social behavior better than anyone else in the world. We know that Facebook is capable of manipulating our emotions, and the most recent research for Facebook itself suggests that connecting with people we care about makes us happy, while binging on videos and other forms of content, even if entertaining or informative, might not be so healthy for us.
I haven't really found or anyone else talking about this specifically, but personally, what I believe is happening is the following:
Facebook knows perfectly that they have a big influence on the way our brains work, especially towards internet stimuli, since a lot of people spend a big majority of their browsing time on facebook.
Our attention towards individual posts is less than it has ever been. We get exposed to dozens of engagement bait posts, advertisements and commercials per minute, and not only is our attention diluted through them, our brain is optimized to ignore most of these unwanted stimuli.
I believe that in the long term, by delivering us with more frequent high quality content, facebook wants our focus to go back in time, so that we start giving more value and paying more attention once again to individual posts, like people did 10 to 15 years ago.
All of this, so that once a targeted advertisement is shown to us in the news feed, there is an increased chance that people may put more interest and focus into them as well, instead of straight up ignoring it.
Facebook is changing.
Great deal... but isn't it always?
Indeed, as usual it's up to us, marketeers, advertisers, growth-hackers.. to embrace the changes and adapt to them.
We can always figure out how to engage consumers in new ways! That's what we do!
Don't feel bad because change is coming. This is the digital age, and part of technology is that its bound to become irrelevant. You know that better than anyone. As always, don't put all your eggs in the same basket.
Continue your education on marketing and be glad that you are ahead of everyone else in tech.
Being here and reading this means that you are already winning!
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