- What's going on everyone?
In this video, I'm going to be talking about the
changes to the Facebook news feed.
Now by now, you probably heard
a lot of opinions on
the impact that Facebook has laid down
for business pages.
Well I'm here to say
that it's not all bad
for business pages.
In fact, Zuckerberg has clearly defined
what Facebook wants from
business pages.
And if you abide by that list of things
chances are
your page is going to get a better reach
than it is now.
Now if you haven't seen this news already,
and if you're not a marketer,
maybe this video won't apply to you
but in some sense I think it applies to everyone of us
who is a content creator.
Most of us have a Facebook page.
Most of us have Facebook groups
or both.
So these changes only affect business pages,
for now,
unless Facebook changes their mind on something else.
And so what is happening here is that
Facebook wants to prioritize
what is seen in the newsfeed.
And what they've been seeing in the news feed
from business pages
is a bunch of junk.
And you might say well I don't post junk
and I get good
reach and I get good interactions,
and people are seeing my content.
Well that's great.
You are in the minority.
And so Facebook for a long time now
has been pushing pages
to the wayside
because of the minutia
that pages are putting out.
The content
is sometimes just a
second thought.
It is a distribution channel,
like a Twitter.
I use Twitter as a distribution.
You know, I use Buffer
and I send it off to Twitter.
Facebook doesn't want that.
Facebook wants you to actually have
engaging content.
They want you to have
conversations with people
who like your page.
They don't want you to just copy and paste
and put something into Facebook.
And just, you know, wash your hands.
That's it, I'm done.
I'm done for the day.
I've posted all my Facebook posts
and now I'm walking away.
That's not what Facebook wants
pages to do anymore.
They want you to fix that.
Alright.
So for the reach right now.
I don't think these changes are going to be in effect.
They might be already starting to be in effect,
but the statements,
the announcements,
which I'll leave in the description below,
were talking about
they will change,
not that they have changed.
So if you're seeing changes in your Facebook newsfeed,
then yeah, they might be already rolling out
these changes.
Facebook wants to prioritize
conversations between family and friends.
And that is what's going to be showing up
in the newsfeed,
primarily first.
And all of the business pages
and brands and public content
will be
secondish,
or third, or fourth,
or last in the newsfeed,
depending on how far you scroll down.
So here's a couple of pieces,
and I'm going to read it directly,
a couple of pieces from Facebook's announcement.
Facebook was built to bring people closer together
and build relationships.
One of the ways we do this
is by connecting people to meaningful posts
from their friends and family
in the News Feed.
Over the next few months,
we'll be making updates to ranking
so people have more opportunities
to interact with the people that they care about.
So they're looking very closely
at the news feed
and prioritizing family and friends' posts.
Alright.
And he goes on to say, Mark Zuckerberg,
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.
So he has clearly outlined
exactly what is going to take place.
Now I don't see this as a bad thing
because Facebook is
forcing business pages
to stop the drivel,
stop the minutia,
focus on people who have liked your page,
give valuable, useful content
for people to digest,
ask questions,
have conversations,
start discussions.
This is what will,
this is the type of content
that will help your page
posts rank higher
in the newsfeed.
So if you think about it,
Facebook pages have already reached rock bottom.
The organic reach
for your business page posts
is roughly one person who has liked your page
out of every 100.
So if you have a small page,
like I do,
Security Marketing Solutions,
I have 94 likes.
So out of the 94 likes,
I'm lucky if maybe one person
comes by and says hello.
So that is just organic reach.
That's not paid reach.
That's not advertising.
That all is a whole separate thing.
So it's been on,
the handwriting's been on the wall
for quite a while
on
Facebook punishing, really,
pages that don't produce
quality
content that is engaging
and starts conversations.
So it's already been there.
So this
implementation has not really changed.
They have basically just come out and said
what they've been doing all along.
So the next question you might have is
well how do you get the interactions
that you'll need for your page
content to be seen?
And Zuckerberg goes into a nice paragraph
that outlines the exact content that they're looking for
that will increase engagement,
start discussions,
and conversations,
and reactions.
Alright.
He says
page posts that generate conversations
between people will show higher in news feed.
For example, live videos
often lead to discussions
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.
Well hey, I'm not a celebrity
and chances are, if you're watching this,
you aren't one yet either.
So in groups, people often interact
around public content.
Local business, connect with your communities
by posting
relevant
updates and creating events.
And news can help start conversations
on important issues.
So, if I were to put this in a bullet list for you,
I would say
live video,
native
video,
which is uploading videos to Facebook
including your SRT,
your captions,
including titles,
including thumbnails
just like you would do it on YouTube.
And not just uploading a video,
actually asking questions
in the little text area.
Asking people who have liked your page
hey, what do you think about this?
Is this something that you would like?
Is this
what are your opinions on this?
Asking questions like that
that will engage
your fans.
Relevant updates.
So giving content that is relevant
to your fan base,
to your market.
Now this is nothing new.
But people have been sharing
just whatever they see on the news,
and they've been posting it right over
onto Facebook.
Now that in itself is not a bad thing.
But if you're just copying and pasting,
copying pasting,
without any interaction,
without asking questions,
without starting a discussion,
then that post is not going to get any traction.
Even if you do all these things
that Facebook is asking you to do,
there is no guarantee
that your content will rise in the newsfeed.
But it's a good start.
And if you think about it,
you're giving the content that your audience wants.
And so you really have to think about
strategically
planning your content
and posting it to Facebook
with all of this in mind,
keeping the fact that you want to start conversations,
you want to start engagement.
It's not going to happen overnight.
But this is what they're looking to do.
So it's no longer
copying pasting everything that you see
and posting it on Facebook.
It's actually creating conversations.
So the next question you might be asking is
why the change?
Well if you think about it,
like I've already said,
it's not much of a change.
But why are they doing it in such a harsh way,
if you will,
if you want to think about it that way.
Why are they doing it
like cut and dry?
There are several reasons
why this has
happened.
One of which,
and maybe the biggest,
is the
congressional hearing
and the backlash on the
Russian influence,
all of the fake news
that was appearing in the news feed,
and how they used news feed
and advertising
to promote their fake news that
influenced the
presidential campaign.
So I think that is a
big reason why
to cut down on that drivel,
cut down on the fake news,
cut down on the like baiting
and the engagement bait
and all that type of stuff.
Like if you agree and
that type stuff.
So that is a big thing
that they are cracking down on.
Another reason is that Facebook
is going crazy right now
with Facebook Watch,
their new YouTube like
section that they have on Facebook.
And you're going to probably see more
content coming in from Facebook Watch
into your news feed
so it will drive traffic
to the Watch page
where you can watch videos
and Facebook shows,
and Facebook generated
content like Return the Favor.
And there's a new Tom Brady one
if you're a Patriots fan
that's going to be coming out.
So stay tuned for that.
I know I would be.
So
I've kind of outlined the steps that you need to do
as a person who owns a business page
on Facebook
about what type of content
that Facebook is looking for and all of that.
Now there are some helpful tips
that you might want to
implement.
There's a way to ask your fan base
to turn on notifications for you page.
That's a good one.
Also for them to actually
click on the follow tab
on your page
and click on
receive notifications
and click on see first.
So you'll see potentially
that content from that page
from you page
in the news feed first.
But that is not a guarantee.
And in fact,
Facebook outlines that is not a guarantee
that you will see
not even any content from this page,
especially if you don't adhere
to the new policies
that Facebook has implemented
about what kind of content
will rise in the news feed.
Another big part
that you might want to get into
is groups.
Groups did a big overhaul last year.
Got Facebook Insights
in the groups now so you have analytics.
You get to see who's posting.
Who's posting how often.
What type of content they're posting,
and all that great information
that was severely lacking
in Groups.
They've also implemented
a couple of other features like
one click button
to recognize the new people
that have joined the group,
stuff like that.
So groups are a great way to
bring your community together
and maybe even create groups around a
more popular topic
like marketing or social media
or gaming or a particular game,
if you're in to that type of thing.
So Facebook groups
are probably the best way to go
to increase your
engagement
with your fan base.
So here are my closing thoughts
and all this and
it's pretty much what I said in the beginning.
This is not
the end of business pages.
There is no panic.
There is no Facebook zero
that some have said.
None of that is going to happen.
This is not the end
of business pages on Facebook
but rather a new beginning,
a new focused beginning,
focused content,
provided by you
and your team if you have a team,
to create valuable useful content
for your market.
And that's pretty much it.
Facebook wants it to
be a positive influence
where people can laugh
and say hello and network,
be supportive of each other,
learn and have discussions
on the topics of the day.
Now that sounds like fun to me.
I don't know about you.
And again, I'll leave links to the two
announcements that
came.
One is from Zuckerberg's
Facebook post.
And the other one is the official Facebook announcement
that came out last week.
So that's it for me.
I hope this video has
dispelled some of the rumors that are going on
that it's the end of Facebook business pages.
Clearly it is not.
It's just a refocus,
a re-energized.
Get your real good content on there,
and have some fun.
And that's what Facebook should be about.
If you enjoyed the video,
give it a thumbs up.
I'd really appreciate that.
And let me know if you have any comments down below.
For more about me,
go to
LarrySnow.me
and I'll see you
in the next video.