With Mark Zuckerberg announcing Facebook is working on a ‘dislike’ button, it makes you wonder what...
In January 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the biggest focus area for Facebook in the coming year would be to make sure that the time we spend on Facebook is more valuable. This means less public content from businesses, media and brands – and more of the personal moments that bring friends and family together. How does this affect your marketing strategy?
After receiving feedback from its users that public content from businesses, brands and media dominates and gradually overrides personal updates from family and friends, Facebook has decided to update the worldwide network.
Zuckerberg pointed out in his announcement about the new update that what Facebook considers to be a valuable use time for the users is to have family and friends at the core of the experience.
Therefore, when the update is implemented, users will see less public content from businesses, media, and brands. This is a change that affects most of us, but how will this affect your marketing?
What does the update mean?
First and foremost: Facebook tries to make the time people spend on Facebook more valuable and personal. That means fewer updates from businesses, newspapers and celebrities, and more from friends, groups, and other engaging content.
Facebook wants to prioritise posts that encourage conversations and meaningful interactions between people. To do this, they will try to predict what posts the user will interact with and place these higher in the feed. This can be a post from a friend or family, a news article, video or other content that inspires and engages both ways.
How does this affect your marketing?
You might notice a decrease in the reach of the posts you do not sponsor. The effect of the change will, of course, vary from company to company and from Facebook page to Facebook page. The kind of content you publish and how people interact with it will be crucial.
Companies that publish engaging content on their Facebook page do not have to worry too much – this content will still be shown to your followers, according to Facebook's own news blog.
Zuckerberg points out that by making these changes, he expects users to spend less time on Facebook and that involvement in some cases will go down, but that the time spent on the platform will be more valuable.
How about advertising on Facebook?
A large part of Facebook's source of income is ads. Regarding Facebook ads, there has not been communicated any changes yet. If you believe there is potential for improvement here, it may be an idea to create mirror audience through Facebook Pixel.
What content Facebook will show less of is unengaging advertising from businesses. As you may already know, inbound marketing is the opposite of this. With inbound marketing, you earn people's attention because the content focuses on utility, learning and entertainment, and the communication goes both ways between business and consumer.
We know that the most valuable content helps you win customers. This form of educational and engaging content will be the type of posts Facebook prefers from businesses.
Our tips on how to market on Facebook when the update is completed
- Create engaging posts, especially if you plan not to sponsor your ad. This can be video, exciting articles and posts that offer a debate.
- When you write text to an article you publish on Facebook, try to formulate it as a question that might spark debate and engagement in the comments, such as: "Tell us what you think about ..."
- Feel free to use messenger in your marketing.
You should also consider creating a group for your audience. With the update, content from “groups” rather than “pages” will be displayed in your follower’s news feed. This group shouldn’t be a substitute for your business profile but rather an additional channel for keeping your engaged followers updated, such as customers and ambassadors.
Briefly summarised
If you create engaging content that adds value to your audience and make use of advertising, you do not have to worry too much about these changes. Remember, you should always earn people’s attention by providing useful and relevant entertainment. The most valuable content will always win over the most customers.
