What Facebook’s News Feed Changes Mean For Your Business Page

announced that they will be making changes to their News Feed algorithm, prioritizing personal accounts over Business pages. You might be wondering what this means for your Facebook Business Page. While it is an update that will definitely decrease your Business Page’s organic reach, that doesn’t mean that all is lost for your Page. We’ll give you a brief overview of what this change means and offer you solid ways to work with the changing tides of Facebook.

With this update to their News Feed, Facebook is essentially wanting to lessen posts and videos from Pages and spark more “meaningful” conversations with friends and family. Mark Zuckerberg had this to say about the updates:

“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Facebook will be adjusting their News Feed algorithm to favor:

• Posts from friends & family
• Posts seeking advice or recommendations from your friends & family
• Popular news articles or videos that spark discussions amongst friends
• Posts from Groups, since this is where a lot of person-to-person conversing happens
• Posts that receive long comments (favoring posts that someone not just liked but actually took the time to write a thoughtful, lengthy response).

Well, expect your numbers to drop initially. I know what you might be thinking, this is the end of the Page as we know it. Don’t fret, we now know that Facebook will be shifting their priority to content that is shared and talked about among friends. The challenge for businesses now is to create content that is more meaningful for people, i.e., content that will inspire people to talk with their friends about.

• Consider getting into Live Videos on Facebook, this is a fantastic way to directly communicate with your customers.
• Focus on producing more meaningful content on your platform to instigate conversations amongst friends. Focus on authenticity. Consumers are craving real marketing from real people these days and less salesy talk.
• Highlight more storytelling in your content and videos.
• Commit to doing more Facebook Ads, this will help get your business seen in people’s News Feeds.
• If you’ve stuck only with Facebook thus far in your business, maybe it’s time to branch out and grow an audience on another platform like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Snapchat.
• Instruct people to use the “See First” option on Facebook so they can see your content first when logging into Facebook. Here’s how it’s done.

Social media applications are constantly changing their operations, but this means your business has new opportunities to grow and succeed in the world of social media. You just have to know what’s going on and adjust accordingly. Mark Stelzner of Social Media Examiner says it perfectly, “As long as there are two billion people using Facebook, there will be value for businesses. They just have to figure out how they fit in.” Be sure to check out their article, where I received most of these awesome tips from. You’ll find they go more in-depth with the Facebook update and how your business can adapt. I hope you feel a little more empowered to take charge of your Business page with these new updates.