It is time to shift the Facebook strategies again for Facebook Page owners. Facebook posted up today some changes to how News Feed will list status updates from Pages, and how they will rank differently than updates from friends. While we are not apposed to the changes, we approach the news with caution as Facebook is never really descriptive in the actual changes they are making.
[h3]Facebook News Announcement[/h3]
[blockquote]…the latest update to News Feed ranking treats text status updates from Pages as a different category to text status updates from friends[/blockquote]
[blockquote]…Page admins can expect a decrease in the distribution of their text status updates, but they may see some increases in engagement and distribution for other story types.[/blockquote]
[blockquote]The best way to share a link after this update will be to use a link-share, so it looks like the one below. We’ve found that, as compared to sharing links by embedding in status updates, these posts get more engagement (more likes, comments, shares and clicks) and they provide a more visual and compelling experience for people seeing them in their feeds.[/blockquote]
[h3]Here is our Reaction[/h3]
- The Good – Creating value added content on your site or in areas that generally are outside of Facebook and using Facebook to help draw your audiences to your stories has always been the best growth model.
- The Bad – All of those automated posts that you send up to Facebook that help grow your audience, create entertainment, will be less likely to show up if they don’t link to content elsewhere. At least that is how we interpret it so far.
- The Ugly – Facebook provides just enough information to know that something is changing. Nobody can really tell how impactful it will be yet. One thing to consider is that it is going to consume more time for those of you who have been riding the easy train to posting content on Facebook alone. Think about how you are going to be scheduling those posts on your website, and coordinating the posts on your social media to provide those links that Facebook will be looking for.
[h3]Approach with Caution[/h3]
It is a strange move for Facebook to pull people out of Facebook, period. Since the history of Facebook, they have been focused on making sure that you start and finish your day inside of Facebook. So we say proceed with caution to be safe.
We will be watching the traffic patterns to see just how impactful this change will be. If we do not already manage your online social media campaigns, I suggest you do the same.