Facebook started off as a social network, through which we would browse photos and posts by friends and families, and share our stories for them to see. Recently, Facebook has become an avenue for businesses to market and news outlets to broaden their reach. As Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg confirms, public content from businesses, brands and media is crowding out these personal moments which Facebook initially set out to provide.

To realign with these core values, Facebook will be making a number of important changes to the algorithm for its News Feed. This post will discuss how these changes will affect small business owners and what they can do to best adapt to these changes.

What are the proposed changes?

In a post on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg reiterates that Facebook was built to bring people closer and build relationships. In order to realign with this purpose, he claims that the upcoming changes will be focused on connecting people to meaningful posts from their friends and family in the News Feed.

The main change to the Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is that it will prioritise posts from friends and family above ‘business content’. Facebook Newsroom claims that this is to allow users more opportunities to interact with people and pages they care about. The algorithm will do this by predicting who and which posts users might want to interact with. The posts this change will prioritise are posts which inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments, and ones which users will want to share and react to.

How would these changes affect small businesses?

Facebook Newsroom outlines that the impact of these changes will depend on the type of content posted by the page, and how users interact with this content.

On the face of it, these changes may strike a blow to online marketing of business pages that rely greatly on Facebook for reaching out to customers and generating leads. It will be especially harder for pages that rely on Facebook for organic distribution (content that pages did not pay to have appear in users’ News Feed). Regardless of your content, the algorithm will automatically show fewer posts from publishers such as businesses and news outlets. The ranking of these pages will depend on the type of content your businesses is providing.

As the updated algorithm will detect attempts to advertise your product without attempting to invoke ‘meaningful discussion’ or ‘meaningful interaction’, you should expect your page traffic to decrease.

What changes you could make to adapt

In the face of competition from the increasing online presence of online businesses, the rising prices of online advertising, and the new changes to Facebook’s algorithm, you may wonder what steps you could take other than submitting to the ever-so rising price of online advertising. The following is a list of changes you can make today to thrive in this highly competitive playing field:

• Relevant Content. For your posts to appear on the News Feed of users, they must be relevant to the specific user. This is why Billy Doulia, DigitasLBi vice president and group director of social strategy emphasises that businesses need to ‘dig in’ to the core of ‘who’ their fans are and create content that is relevant to spark conversations amongst them. These could include relevant updates, promotions or events.
• Engaging content. The days of posting more often and ‘click-baiting’ or ‘engagement-baiting’ users to increase your traffic are over. In order to best adapt to the changes, you will need to produce content in line with Facebook’s Head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri’s reassurance that pages that attempt to ‘spark conversations’ and ‘meaningful interactions between people’ will see less of an effect by the changes. No-more ‘comment your favourite…’ or ‘tag your friend for your chance to win’.
• Groups. One great way to make sure your customers continue to see your content is to create a community through Facebook groups.
• Live videos – NOT pre-recorded. According to Facebook Newsroom, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. This means your live videos will be prioritised by the new algorithm.
• Stop posting content linking to your website.
• DO NOT limit your advertising to Facebook. There are numerous other platforms you can reach out to your customers or promote your business on. These could include Snapchat, Twitter or Instagram.
• Get your followers to select your page as ‘See First’ in News Feed Preferences.

Final thoughts

Facebook was initially a platform to bring individuals together and closer through sharing posts with each other. Are these changes a step by Facebook to clear out the clutter that has diverted Facebook’s progression from what it set-out to be? Is this a genuine attempt to put the user at the core of the experience, or a move to increase advertising revenue? Regardless of the motive, it is likely that both of these will be achieved with these changes.

What do you think about these changes? What steps will you be taking to best adapt to these changes? We would love to hear from you! Let us know your thoughts by tagging us #lawpath or @lawpath.