Hey, it's Jay Baer with another Jay Today, where I give you a piece of my
mind three minutes at a time.
A big announcement from Facebook over the last couple of days.
Facebook has said that they are going to change what gets
shown in the news feed, and they're going to make those changes in two
ways.
First, Facebook is going to not show posts as often if the average
length of time that people stay on those posts after clicking is short.
Let me break this down for you.
What this means is that if you put something on Facebook and people click on
it but then immediately are like no, that sucks, and then they come back to
Facebook, Facebook will start to hide or de-credit that particular piece of
content.
Now this is fantastic, because it makes Facebook not only use what
is on the surface to judge content but also what happens post-click.
Google has been doing this for many, many years.
One of the ways that Google ranks ads in paid search, search engine
marketing, SEM, is based on the length of time people spend on landing
pages post-click.
Facebook has adopted this same technology, which is really good news for us
all.
It's going to get rid of a lot of spammy, crappy, sort of click bait,
fake content in a Facebook news feed.
So that's good news for us all.
However, as marketers, it really makes it important that you create landing
pages that really apply and are relevant to the people that you're trying
to reach on Facebook.
So that post-click experience needs to be just as important as the actual
content that you post on Facebook.
Speaking of which, the second piece in this change that they announced is that Facebook
is going to give less credit to images posted on Facebook and more
credit to links posted on Facebook.
You may realize that when you put an image on Facebook directly,
you click the image and it goes to the page.
Well, when you post a link, it actually automatically pulls an image from
the landing page and the first line of copy from the landing page and shows
it right on the Facebook post.
This is supposed to be more transparent for the Facebook users so they kind
of know what they're getting into, but this is going to put a lot of
pressure on marketers to make sure the images and the description of
anything that they're linking to in Facebook are actually relevant and
coherent.
If you weren't thinking about having good images on your blog, on
every single blog post, for example, you've got to fix that right now.
Because if you don't, every time you post something to Facebook, the image
that gets sucked in with that link is going to either be invisible, or
crappy, or not optimized.
A couple of consolidated pieces of advice here.
First, make sure that you build landing pages that are relevant and
effective, and pay attention to how long people spend on landing pages.
Two, anytime you're linking to something on Facebook, make sure that what
you're linking to has a good signature image that will automatically get
pulled into that Facebook post.
Today's Sprout Social shoutout is to my friend Jason Falls.
Jason Falls is a fantastic digital and social media marketer.
He was the original founder of Social Media Explorer, one of the foundational
blogs in the social media industry.
Jason lives in Louisville.
You should absolutely follow him on social media if you're not, especially right
now, because he has an exciting announcement coming up in a couple
of days that I can't share with you, but he will.
You've got to make sure you follow him right now, in case
you don't, so you'll make sure to get the announcement when it comes out.
This show, Jay Today, is brought to you by Sprout Social, a fantastic
social media marketing platform that I use for my own social media stuff,
and Candidio.
Candidio is a terrific tool that I use to make these videos.
I just shoot these on my iPhone, and Candidio does the rest.
Until tomorrow, I'm Jay Baer.
This has been Jay Today.
Thanks for watching.
Hey, I'm Jay Baer.
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