Facebook’s latest updates to its News Feed algorithm could be bad news for brands hoping to use content they have created or curated to connect with their fans and followers.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network with 1.4 billion users and 900 million people accessing the site on a daily basis, according to the company’s figures.
In a post on its official blog this week, Facebook said it had made some important changes to the algorithm it uses to decide what users see in their News Feed.
The key point for brands is a change to the number of updates users will see from the same source. This could mean that if you are using your company page to share regular updates with your followers, fewer of those posts will actually appear in News Feeds in the future.
“We’ve also heard from people that they enjoy reading articles from a wide range of publishers, and it can be repetitive if too many articles from the same source are back to back in their News Feed,” Facebook said.
“We’ll also be making an update to reduce how often people see several posts in a row from the same source in their News Feed.”
How your Facebook company page will be affected
Facebook said most pages wouldn’t see any significant changes, however some may see a small increase in referral traffic whereas other as may notice minor decreases.
The company referred page owners to its publishing guidelines, which include a number of suggestions for optimising content. One tip is to use hashtags to help people using Facebook’s search function to find relevant content.
But whatever steps you take to optimise your content, getting it in front of your fans and followers remains a challenge.
Organic reach on social media continues to decline
The organic reach of Facebook posts has been declining for some time and this latest change is likely to make it harder for brands to reach their audience without paying to promote their content.
Other social media sites are following a similar route to Facebook, encouraging brands to look at paid advertising rather than relying on organic reach.
LinkedIn, for example, which is the largest social network for professionals, offers its own range of ad products, including the option to promote content users have either shared or created within the LinkedIn environment.
Paid promotion provides opportunities to reach out beyond your existing followers to the wider audience using your chosen social platform.
With LinkedIn, the majority of people using the site are at work or accessing it for professional reasons. As well as networking, LinkedIn is now Australia’s leading site for employees, having recently overtaken Seek, according to a recent a study.
