Facebook News Feed Algorithm Change 2018
About 7 hours ago Mark Zuckerberg announced the beginning of a new Facebook News Feed Algorithm Change which, he says, is the result of recent tests and community feedback.
The core idea expressed in the announcement is the one to improve the quality of time spent by facebook users while using the social platform.
Mark Zuckerberg said: "As we roll this out, you'll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard -- it should encourage meaningful interactions between people."
This is all about the excessive amount of spammy marketing content machine-gunned down news-feeds including 'engagement-bait' posts which will be detected and reduced in exposure by the FB Algorithm, and all those videos people may glance over without much interaction.
You must have been there, pop in to Facebook... scroll down your News Feed... start to 'Passively' watch a few videos... ten or more minutes pass by... you haven't interacted, replied to any of those posts... you feel like you just wasted time. And this is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg 'said' wants to fix. Too much passive watching and not enough user interaction.
You must also have noticed more and better interaction on other social networks like Twitter and the Facebook-owned Instagram.
It can be the welcome end to spammy content coming from spammy marketing pages that build no value, spammy practices from those marketers always trying to game the system (instead of building long term, long lasting business and product value) but this (the change) has been going on for long time.
If you connect with your FB audience, give them value and generate social interaction, if you have an healthy and active dialogue with your Facebook audience, your Facebook side of your ethical business should still be able to organically reach the intended audience, less than before but it should still be worthwhile.
Beyond the exposed idea of wanting to improve quality of time spent on Facebook and wanting to increase 'active' use of what is indeed a social platform, Facebook has been reducing exposure of marketing posts more and more during the past few years for two reasons.
1 - FB wants to push marketing pages to spend more money on FB ads... you want to reach more FB users? You have to pay us (FB) for showing your ad-marketing-posts... Free reach has been going down for this type of marketing year after year
2 - FB has to protect their assets which is Facebook Users. Too much of those marketing posts = more people stop using FB for social interaction which in turns creates a more passive audience. A passive audience is not going to be great target audience. A more active audience means Facebook can eventually generate more advertising income out of their ad-platform
Looking at this from an higher level, this is another hint to the reality that you should avoid having your business being dependent on any single channel (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc...). You must retain control of your business, you need to solidify your own online business on its own online real estate (Your Own Business Website, you own customer lists). Social platforms are additional source of traffic and communication but you should not be fully dependent on them and surely you should never be fully dependent on a 'single' social channel. You have no control over YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google... they change their algorithm and your traffic is switched off.
Another important statement from Mark Zuckerberg is this one: "We started making changes in this direction last year, but it will take months for this new focus to make its way through all our products. The first changes you'll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups."
So this is not going to be limited to News Feed.
If you are a Wealthy Affiliate member learning and putting in practice what is taught here you will be fine. Wealthy Affiliate teaches you to build your own business ideas into stable online businesses based on healthy, solid, true, effective marketing practices. Follow the training, keep up with Wealthy Affiliate training updates and you will always have a stable, long lasting Online Business.
What are your thoughts and reactions to this latest Facebook News Feed Algorithm Change?
Recent Comments
2
Heard that on the news Tiziano. We will have to rethink our Facebook marketing strategies. I use Facebook solely on one of my online stores. We will go back to the planning board once we have all the facts.
Hennie