Facebook changes for 2018 don’t look good for business…or do they?
On 12 January 2018, Mark Zuckerberg gave his 2018 update and since then agencies and journalists have been predicting the death of Facebook Business Pages. Are they right? Here we’ll examine some of what is being said and give our predictions for 2018.
Here are some extracts from the Facebook press release, which outline some of the practical changes we will see in the coming weeks:
What does this mean for Pages and public content?
“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.
As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”
What type of Page posts create meaningful interactions?
“Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed. For example, live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook–in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. Many creators who post videos on Facebook prompt discussion among their followers, as do posts from celebrities. In Groups, people often interact around public content. Local businesses connect with their communities by posting relevant updates and creating events. And news can help start conversations on important issues.
Using ‘engagement-bait’ to goad people into commenting on posts is not a meaningful interaction, and we will continue to demote these posts in News Feed.”
This isn’t the death of Facebook Pages for Business, it is the death of poor content, it is a lifeline for Facebook which was seeing users engage less and leave for other social media platforms. This is brilliant for good marketeers, for brilliant businesses and for Facebook users.
The incentive to produce good content, whether an advertising campaign or an organic Facebook post will be strong as performance will be rewarding.
These changes are being led by users, who hate click bait, poor content and seeing their feeds cluttered by irrelevant adverts. This will improve their News Feed and therefore increase their usage of Facebook which will in turn reward the businesses who do get their content seen.
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