Facebook 2015 has made a number of significant News Feed changes. These are so significant that businesses relying on organic Facebook Feeds need to prepare their marketing plans to meet these changes and still stay in the Facebook game.
One major change is that Facebook is reducing the number of what it deems to be overtly promotional posts in News Feed (i.e. “spammy”):
“As part of an ongoing survey we asked hundreds of thousands of people how they feel about the content in their News Feeds. People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content.”
Facebook will not show in New Feeds, any organic posts that it perceives as “spammy” and so the days of free advertising posts is basically over. These promotional posts include:
- Singularly encourage people to primarily buy a product or service
- Enter into promotions or competing with no real value
- Posts that are duplicate content from ads (including display ads)
- Organic posts will decrease, so if you want to appear you basically have to pay.
For those businesses who don’t have a big budget, try the following:
- Create great content that is value adding, educational, that people will share and increase engagement.
- Don’t hide links in photo captions – use correct link formats,
- Do a Facebook test campaigns to see which campaigns get the most engagement. e.g. instead of “Merry Christmas” offer a recipe for turkey or how business can increase sales over Christmas
- Use Instagram video and image and post to Facebook as well
- Organise your social media calendar to ensure variety and quality posts.
- If you post in a timely fashion, you will get a higher place in News Feeds.
So basically if you post for quality, not quantity, post content that views want to read, be inspiring, be funny or teach you have some chance of appearing in a News Feed on Facebook. Otherwise you may as well engage in a paid campaign as they are very high yielding and work very effectively. Facebook posts that go nowhere are wastes time and energy. Maker sure you post cleverly for 2015 and beyond.
Featured image courtesy of facebook.com/shnookisheet
