One of the main reasons people come to Facebook is to see what’s happening in their News Feeds.
The social media's goal, is to show people the things that they want to see, or at least relevant to them. Because the more interesting a content is to users, the more likely they will engage with that content, adding up to the company's revenue.
Facebook has long been a place for businesses. With Facebook having billions of users, businesses can tap into various pools of its diverse audience, engaging them and increase organic reach.
However, fake news are clearly stealing many of the spotlights, putting legitimate stories and friends' posts on the more blurry side of the social network. This leaves companies struggling. For that reason, Facebook is changing how its News Feed work (again) by making it harder for Pages' contents to reach others.
Applicable to both Facebook's desktop website and its apps, the social giant is prioritizing Pages that have paid for advertising, over those that don't.
Facebook has updated its News Feed algorithms for several times over the last few years. Each time, it has made it easier for people to see posts from their friends and family rather than posts from business pages. And this update will make it even harder for businesses to get organic reach, given that Facebook is prioritizing non-business page posts and those that paid for ads.
Facebook explained in its blog post:
While this change won't affect large companies and corporations that are spending a significant sum of money on Facebook to promote their brands, small businesses and startups may struggle.
Initially testing in in six countries: Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia, it looks like Facebook is trying to make things harder, especially for businesses who rely on content marketing. Due to their limited budget, they will have difficulties in reaching their customer base and beat the competition. Or at least thrive on the social network.
With the update, Facebook is introducing two feed options: a News Feed which is the usual place where updates and posts happen (but with more limitation), and an Explore feed (designated by a new rocket icon) to place other information including business Pages and their posts.
The News Feed still includes sponsored posts, giving businesses the ability to pay their way into this "personal" space, but decreasing the chance that they will end up there organically.
The Explore feed on Facebook's desktop is relegated to the left sidebar, and can go unnoticed by users.
Facebook acknowledges that the change will negatively impact most of the marketers who use business Pages to promote their content. This is where it recommends businesses to make content that is informative and entertaining to encourage more shares.
This leaves them with three choices:
First, they have to reevaluate how they use Facebook and see if another platform can allow them to engage with customers; second, create a new marketing strategy based on circumventing some of the negatives associated with the updated algorithms; and third, pay for ads in hopes of making valuable connections.
Although some strategies can help increase engagements, this requires businesses to understand how to beat Facebook's system to ensure that their contents are reaching their targeted audience.
They can also create viral contents, and use research-back methods for creating engaging headlines, making gaining traction on the social media platform less difficult. In short, they need to be more creative if they don't have the money to dedicate on Facebook marketing strategy.
This update may be frustrating to business owners. Facebook users with large amounts of friends, family members, and liked business pages will have thousands of potential posts that Facebook can put on to their News Feeds. And with Facebook's strategy to put prioritize contents that matter most, users should see the posts they are most likely to engage with.
Without this kind of system, News Feed will become a cluttered list of updates overrun with marketing and advertising posts.