Is it really Newsfeedpocalypse on Facebook?

It’s true. Yesterday Facebook’s Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri posted on the Facebook News blog that they are making a major change to Facebook’s News Feed. (If you haven’t yet heard here is the actual announcement: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/0...) So what does this mean? Is it time to abandon Facebook altogether? How do we make sure people see our content?

It’s true. Yesterday Facebook’s Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri posted on the Facebook News blog that they are making a major change to Facebook’s News Feed. So what does this mean? Is it time to abandon Facebook altogether? How do we make sure people see our content?

So what exactly is this change? It’s really pretty simple: data shows Facebook that users feel like their newsfeeds are overrun with impersonal content from pages instead of content from their friends and family and they aren’t happy about that, so Facebook is adjusting newsfeed to give people more of what they want — personal content.

So if you run a page for your org what exactly does this all mean? Will your organic reach plummet? Will anyone ever again see my content?

Short answer: not necessarily and no. It’s true…pages will likely see drops in reach- some more than others. So how do we mitigate that? A few thoughts:

1. It starts with genuine two-way engagement. If you are using a page to just broadcast content about your work, then yes you will likely see a large drop in organic reach. However, if you are using your page to engage in conversation with your community, if you are using your page to encourage conversation amongst your community members the drop you see should be minimal, In Mosseri’s own words, “Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”
2. Second, great content. If you’ve ever attended one of my trainings, you’ve heard me talk about the sentences that describe great social content: content people want to be seen engaging with, validates their social self and is snackable. Recently two more sentences have joined the family: content that makes people feel a part of something and content that is shareable*. If your community shares your content, their friends and family who regularly engage with them are likely to see that content. If you’ve never really focused on identifying your Facebook champions, now is the perfect time to do so as those champions are the people who will help you to minimize any potential negative effect of this change on your organic reach.
3. champions, now is the perfect time to do so as those champions are the people who will help you to minimize any potential negative effect of this change on your organic reach.
4. 1. Video is still important, and live video even more so. The data is clear that live video and the way it is done on Facebook nurtures conversation and engagement. Caution: like everything else it should be a strategic part of your content strategy…not every moment warrants the time spent to do Facebook Live but when it’s done right it will help.

It boils down to my 4 favorite sentences:

Respect the inbox. Respect the newsfeed. Respect your audience. Respect yourself.

If you have something important to say, say it. If you don’t, then shhh. Posting content just to post content is probably the fastest way to ensure a drop in your organic reach. When you respect that inbox and newsfeed you are showing your audience respect by not wasting their time on content that isn’t worth their time and thus respecting yourself by not wasting your time creating content they don’t want to see.

Bottom line…it’s not just about creating content and expecting people to share it or expecting Facebook to deliver your content to people. You need to spend just as much time thinking about using that content to help build community as you do building the content itself.

If you’d like to learn even more about this and other social media strategies I will be leading a 4 day Advanced Social Media Strategy Training in Oakland March 26–29 and again in DC Mid May.

** I saw someone in a FB comment today wondering how to figure out how to make their content more shareable- here’s the short version: Go back thru your Facebook data for the last six months and identify your 10 most shared posts. Analyze them and see if you can identify what they have in common that led to such shareability and then use that to create shareable content in the future.