Getting on Facebook can be a great way for businesses to connect and build relationships with customers and potential customers. Whenever you post photos, text updates or link shares to your page, you hope that it will appear in the home feed of as many people as possible–who will then engage with your content. But what exactly is most likely to show up in the home feed of other Facebook users? Facebook has recently made a number of tweaks to their algorithm that affects this. If you want to stay visible to your fan base, it’s important to stay on top of these changes and change your content accordingly so that it continues to get pushed by Facebook. Have a social media marketing strategy that uses the Facebook algorithm to your advantage!
So what changes has Facebook recently made?
The Facebook algorithm now favors visual link posts for pages and text updates for individuals.
If you have a business page, the last thing you want to do is have a lot of text updates because Facebook will not be pushing that. Here is an example of what not to do:
Facebook will instead be favoring link shares with strong visual content. Here is an example of that:
Link shares are more likely to be pushed by Facebook and strong visual content is more likely to draw engagement from your fans. We recommend posting a mix of links (which pull their image from the link source) and sourced images for your business page, and seeing how reach and engagement compare.
The only time we recommend posting simple text updates is when you are posting from your own personal account. Facebook will actually be encouraging this kind of posting and sharing these updates with more of your friends.
Page posts that tag other Pages may be seen by new people
The other major change that Facebook has made recently to its newsfeed is that it will now be adding posts to newsfeed where pages have tagged other pages. This is what Facebook had to say in it’s newsroom:
“Now, when a Page tags another Page, we may show the post to some of the people who like or follow the tagged Page. For example, this post by the Bleacher Report might be shown in News Feed to people who follow or like Dwight Howard, in addition to people who follow or like the Bleacher Report.”
What this basically means is that when your page tags another page, that page’s fans will have a greater chance of seeing your post. What does this mean you should do? Get out there and be social with other pages! You still can’t tag an individual in your page’s posts (the “Dwight Howard” referred to is a page, not an individual profile) but you can tag other pages in your posts and have your reach expand to their fans.
Adjusting to the changes Facebook makes in it’s algorithm can make a big difference for your social media marketing efforts. Have you adjusted your tactics and noticed a difference? We’d love to know in the comments below!
Sources
Wordstream
Facebook Newsroom
