There’s a good chance you saw the Facebook friends and family update already on your news feed. But have you contemplated what it implies to your business? On January 11, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced major changes to the news feed, being instituted immediately. Facebook news feeds will now prioritize content that originates from family and friends, instead of posts displaying “public content” from businesses, brands, and media. This change will help create more interaction with who and what Facebook users care about.
In other words, Facebook “predicts” posts that users will be more willing to react to, comment on, and share with their friends. So as of now, you can expect posts that inspire this kind of engagement to land at top news feeds. Why the change? Facebook claims they hope to prioritize Facebook friend relationships for our social well-being, rather than push a business agenda.
While this is lovely for our social lives, the Facebook friends and family update may wreak a little havoc on our marketing capabilities, especially for small businesses. With these changes, Facebook’s VP of News Feed Adam Mosseri stated that “pages may see their reach, video watch time, and referral traffic decrease.” It also means that what you post on your brand’s page is going to be far less visible.
The company went on to explain that the changes (luckily?) won’t affect sponsored posts – i.e., the posts you pay for. So now more than ever, Facebook ads and sponsored posts are paramount to maintaining a strong presence on the network. If you want to keep eyes on your posts, you can’t rely on organic placement anymore. If you want to stay visible, it’s time to pay to play.
The good thing is, you can tackle those Facebook ads for relatively little spend. And you can tailor just who gets served your sponsored content. But if you don’t give it a shot, you run the risk of not being seen at all.