Facebook Update: Page Reach

At this point, I am sure we have all heard the news that Facebook has dramatically changed the News Feed. As a part of our ongoing learnings and research for 2018, we will be breaking down any and all platform adjustments so that you have the information and tools needed to tackle these challenges as they arise. Luckily, much of the work we have done over the past 10 months has prepared us for this day (and in terms of our current developments with Visine and Gieco will make use look well ahead of the curve).

Let's dive right in...

Currently, the News Feed algorithm optimizes for time-spent-on-site and looks at other engagement metrics such as “likes”, clicks, comments and shares of posts. They want you to be glued to Facebook.

Going forward, the weightings of signals in the news feed algorithm will change dramatically. Posts from family and friends will be much more prominent, and posts from publisher pages will be suppressed, possibly by as much as 5x.

What does this mean for you?

First and foremost, we estimate that publishers will on average see an 80% reduction in page reach, clicks, and engagement. This is in addition to years of changes that have demoted business pages to only reach on average 2-5% of page followers per post. This information has been sourced from trusted partners within our network that work with high volume social publishers like Buzzfeed and Mashable.

The key to success on Facebook is in generating meaningful, "top-of-mind" conversations with your audiences. Likes and views have been demoted further and are officially viewed as passive, gameable metrics. Comments and shares will increase in importance, not only for maintaining page reach but also when looking to engage new audiences. Branded content and promotional efforts that only speak to a segment of your audiences will struggle the most.

Cheap and efficient Facebook advertising will also be affected. While these effects are still, relatively unknown, it is safe to assume that CPMs will increase dramatically due to a significant decrease in News Feed inventory.

What now?

While these changes are sweeping and potentially devastating to publishers there is still a lot of blue sky to explore on Facebook.

Live Video has become the ultimate tool to increase organic page reach and on-going engagement. kyzn recommends creating 2-3 recurring live series, on the main network pages, to maintain visibility and reach with your audiences.

"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."

Facebook Groups fall into the category of types of content that spark meaningful discussion, so we expect their organic engagement to hold steady or even increase over time. Circling back to our very first conversation, we recommend creating "lifestyle" or genre specific groups to help service the fandom surrounding your programming. Think of these as Reddit threads of Web 1.0 forums where fans control the conversation while you feed them new and exciting talking points.

Comments from Mark Zuckerberg...

"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.

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.

For example, there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We've seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.

Now, I want to be clear: by making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too."

Feel free reach to reach out with any comments, questions or feedback. We hope to provide these reports within 24-48 hours of any major platform changes as they will have an immediate impact on current business. As we move forward we will also include these reports within our client portal.

More information on the portal coming soon!