Early this January, Facebook announced that they are making changes to its news feed. Quoting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg;

“…we're making a major change to how we build Facebook. I'm changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”

You might have come across different articles or people talking about the so-called Facebook Zero. So, what does this mean for the users?

Facebook argues that they are going to prioritize “meaningful” person-to-person interactions among friends and family over posts from Facebook pages. This means that users will mostly see what their friends and family share and comment on while Facebook ‘keeps’ on de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.

What about for the brands? What does this mean to them and what they should do to keep building and strengthening their online presence? Now here is our focus on this article. Get your notebook and pen ready!

First, we should all know for the fact that this update is not something new on Facebook rather they’re just openly communicating it right now. There is plenty of research and articles that all prove Facebook Page organic reach has been dropping down for some years now. Here’s Facebook’s response from 2014, which notes,

“There is now far more content being made than there is time to absorb it. On average, there are 1,500 stories that could appear in a person’s News Feed each time they log onto Facebook. For people with lots of friends and Page likes, as many as 15,000 potential stories could appear any time they log on.”

Facebook pages reach started dropping for years now, and currently, it’s common to see a page with 100,000 likes have a reach of 1500-3,000 that’s 3% of the total page likes. This means that since 2014, brands have been forced to buy their way into the Facebook news feed if they hoped of actually getting enough eyeballs on their content. So how can brand overcome this?

CREATING MORE RELEVANT AND MOST ENGAGING CONTENTS

One important thing that brands should understand is that now is the time to start working on a new strategy for creating most relevant content which will trigger much engagement from their audiences. Speaking of engaging content, what are those engaging content? Take those entertaining, educational and inspirational content mix with your brand content and now give them a nice and human touch and put them in the Facebook world. These are the contents that are more likely to get reactions, comments, and shares.

Facebook news feed algorithms are going to work in this way; users will begin to see less and less of your content even if they liked it. For the content to be considered meaningful by the Facebook algorithm, users will have to comment on it and create conversation.

As stated by Facebook’s Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri on Interview with Wired, Facebook will be weighing

“…long comments more than short comments, because we find regularly that if you take the time to actually write a more thoughtful perspective on something that correlates positively with a comment that someone actually would respond to or Like.”

At least this will give your content a free ride on Facebook though still don’t expect much reach from this as Facebook goal is to make you spend on ads and not giving you a free ride as before.

One thing to be very careful about is, never ask your fans to like, comment or share your content. This is known as engagement baits which includes click-baits and link-baits, and Facebook announced that they are going to be very strict with this. Facebook algorithms are getting smarter so to be on the safe side just avoid this strategy on your content.

EXPLORE THE WORLD OF FACEBOOK LIVE

Explore the world of Facebook live. Facebook live is one of the great free features on Facebook that can give your brand high and free reach while ensuring enough engagement from the audience. Most of the brands ignore this feature thinking that it's more of personal use but to tell you; this is one of a great feature that Facebook algorithms have been pushing it freely to its audience. Facebook report shows that Live video has been specifically namechecked by Facebook as a way for brands to retain a slice of the organic pie and brands that have been using it gets average six times as many interactions as regular videos.

“…live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook – in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. Many creators who post videos on Facebook prompt discussion among their followers.”

BE STRATEGICAL ON MEDIA BUYING, HIRE EXPERTS FOR CONSULTATION

This update means that brands and publishers will have to spend more dollars on Facebook ads for more people to see their content. Speaking of content, this includes all those products, services, articles/stories that as a brand you have been pushing on your page. You might have been being involved media buying on your Facebook strategy before, but this time you have to be a little strategic about it.

If you feel like your Facebook content and social media strategy is going to be affected by this new change and you’re not sure how to overcome it, get help from a media buying experts or digital advertising agency who can consult you on how you can strategically spend your money and see the return. As a businessman, you don’t want to lose those dollars and get low ROI.

It’s that time you need to review your digital marketing strategies and find what works better for your brand. SmartCodes is an Award-winning Digital Advertising Agency in Tanzania and for years now it has been building successful engagement based on 360 digital marketing. Whether you need fully outsourced support or just strategy and creative development, SmartCodes can develop a project scope that works within your budget.

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