Facebook Updates It’s Algorithm, Again
On Wednesday, Facebook announced that they’d be updating the algorithm behind the News Feed to put more focus on Friends and Family.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, it looks like that organic reach is going to drop again. Publishers have long been complaining about the rapid decline of organic reach for their posts. Back in April, after a similar update was announced, Rand Fishkin suggested such an update could have a bigger impact on businesses than the Google Mobile Update.
It’s become increasingly difficult for Business Pages to get unpaid visibility on Facebook and this new update doesn’t sound like it’ll be making it too much easier.
With the latest updates, your organic reach is now even more reliant on users sharing your content. The reach of actual page posts will be decreased even more.
Why are they doing this then?
According to Facebook, users are becoming concerned that they missing out on important updates from friends and family, and instead seeing too much content from brands.
It’s in Facebook’s interests to improve the News Feed for their users, after all, if their users aren’t happy with the content they’re seeing in Facebook, they’re more likely to move over to a competitor that gives them what they want (here’s looking at you Snapchat).
This all makes it seem like it’s becoming a case of pay to play for brands and publishers on the social network.
Publisher content shared by a user’s friend in the News Feed shouldn’t be impacted by the change too much, but if you rely on referral traffic from actual Page posts, you’ll be looking at a drop.
What can you do?
Tim Peterson, reporting on the matter over on Marketing Land, makes a valid point:
“there’s a chicken-and-egg problem here: If people aren’t already sharing a Page’s posts en masse, how’s that Page supposed to get their newly more shareable posts in front of people in the first place?”
That said, you should make sure that your content is easily shared by including the appropriate share buttons on your website.
What’s your thoughts on this latest update? Is Facebook a channel you still focus on, or have you made like Copyblogger and getting rid of it?