What impact will the Facebook Newsfeed Update have on your business?

The goal of the News Feed has always been to show the user relevant content that is important to them. Facebook constantly attempts to improve this experience and based on recent feedback, it was suggested that people were missing important updates from those that mattered most, whilst having their feeds bombarded by unwanted posts liked by their friends.

With this in mind, Facebook recently updated their news feed algorithm. This will impact businesses wanting to market to new customers.

We've rounded up the changes and outlined the impact below:

 1) Content with more

The first update improves the scrolling experience for those who don't have a lot of content available to look at. Until now, you would not see multiple posts from the same one source in a row. Facebook, however, is now relaxing the conditions around this rule. From now on, if you run out of content whilst you scroll through your news feed, you'll be presented with more posts, potentially from sources you have already viewed in that session.

This should help your business as those posting regularly should begin to see their content delivered time and time again to those who need it.

This update update ensures content posted by the friends, companies or customers that the user cares about — including videos, photos, status updates and links — will be higher up in the news feed so that you’re less likely to miss it.

Facebook has said it will attempt to strike the right balance of content for each and every user.

The key point to take away here is that meaningful engagement is paramount. Ensuring your customers interact and like what they see will ensure you are pushed to the top. Failing to do this successfully will downgrade your posts, which may lead to them going unnoticed so make it count.

Unfortunatley Facebook haven't introduced a dislike button. Although user should begin to see more content posted by friends, the third update is in regards to the interactions that those friends have with a post. A lot of people have complained about seeing stories their friends have liked or commented on. Stories like these will now appear much further down in the News Feed, or not be included at all.

It could be argued that this is going to restrict the reach of posts to potential new leads - but do you really want your company posts to be annoying people? Believe in your content and qualified leads will find you.

Our view

If you are a small to medium sized business, pages remain extremely important. They offer an easy-to-organise, cost effective online presence platform for people to discover and learn about your company. The pages work across platforms without requiring any extra configuration, containing essential information about your business. They also offer photo tools, events and videos which have the ability to bring you business’ story to life

Ensure your content speaks directly to your customers, make it engaging, informative and shareable and Facebook will do the rest!

We'd love to hear how your business uses Facebook to interact with it's customers, please share your comments below.

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