What the Facebook News Feed Changes Mean for Businesses

Chances are you've heard that Facebook is changing their News Feed settings to improve the consumer experience based on feedback from user surveys.

Starting sometime this month, Facebook will be reducing visibility of posts that are "too professional."  Moving forward, Pages that post promotional content can expect their organic reach to fall significantly over time. So, what can you do about it?

Employ a social media strategy that generates content that is not deemed "too promotional" according to Facebook's algorithms. Apparently, surveys have  found three things that make organic posts seem "too promotional" to users:

1. Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
2. Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
3. Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Okay, Facebook, challenge accepted.

In theory, this would mean that witty, creative, insightful posts would continue to garner the same reach as they have in the past. Of course, many people suspect Facebook is simply rewarding companies who spend advertising dollars since that's now the only way to ensure your content is being viewed by your followers and potential fans. 

The reality is that while I suspect that was a huge bonus for Facebook, I highly doubt that this is a purely self-serving move. As a consumer, I completely support algorithms that improve the user experience and ensure brands are proving me useful content in my News Feed. Of course, I am very likely to unfollow any company that abuses the privilege of appearing in my feed, and one hopes that concern is enough reason for businesses to hold themselves to higher standards of content creation.

The Secret to Digital Marketing Success

The famous line from Field of Dreams applies to digital marketing success:

If you build it, they will come.

You have to continually create content that is interesting, useful and relevant to your audience.  Sometimes your content can be humorous and sometimes you can do some blatant self-promotion, but for the most part you need to provide your audience with information that's relevant to them and easy for them to digest.

And creating content isn't enough, because if content is king, then context is queen.

There's plenty of content out there in the ether that we never see.  Making the right content available to the right audience at the right time is the context that makes marketing successful.  There are so many platforms in digital marketing - websites, social media platforms, blogs, etc. - and it's important to pick the right context for your message so that it hits with the biggest impact.

Throwing in the Social Media Towel

Many brands are hopping on the social media bandwagon.  At first, social media marketing is new and exciting, so teams are likely to generate lots of content and new ideas during the launch phase of social media marketing.

The trouble is that as time goes by, content creation reaches a plateau and the appeal of social media marketing begins to wear off.

Social media marketers often suffer from writers block, building a list of followers and persisting when it feels they aren't making any headway.  The pressure of generating fresh content and staying top of mind with an audience can drain the motivation right out of the social media team.

That said, how do you know whether it's time to take a vacation or throw in the social media towel?

Here are three signs that you might need to throw in the social media towel:

You aren't posting anymore
One of the most important things to consider before starting a social media campaign is whether or not you'll be able to maintain a posting schedule.  Once you establish your following, they'll expect to hear from you on a regular basis.  If you find your social media strategy going stagnant, you either need to put in more effort or throw in the towel.

You're not succeeding 
There are lots of reasons you may not be succeeding - perhaps you're trying to promote your company, but nobody is buying what you're selling.  Obviously, if you've just launched your social media program you may need to give your efforts more time before you write them off.  If you've been at it for a while and you're still not seeing the results you want it's time to either switch up your strategy or throw in the towel.

You're too busy
Whether you're overwhelmed with new business or job creep is reducing the time you can devote to your social media program, you may reach a point where you just aren't able to find the time to sustain a successful social media program.  If your social media marketing strategy has become a chore rather than something you want to do, it's time to seriously evaluate the benefits and costs of your marketing efforts.  You have three choices: find the time yourself, delegate the responsibilities to someone else or abandon your social media program.