The Facebook News Feed algorithm changed again. It is now favoring stories from friends and family
In this week’s article we are covering the latest Facebook News Feed algorithm changes that aim to show people the stories that are most relevant to them. Continue reading to find out more about the change and how it might impact your Facebook page.
Why another update in the Facebook News Feed algorithm?
The giant social network recently announced a change in their News Feeds algorithm. Facebook’s algorithm will now show people posts that “are more relevant to them” and thus will favor posts from friends and family. This sounds similar to the explanation of the Instagram algorithm change that rolled out recently. You can read about the recent change in Instagram’s feed algorithm in our article from last month here.
The reason of the recent Facebook News Feeds algorithm change is to support the initial idea of connecting people with their friends and family. Facebook explained that this has always been their main driving force, and that they want to keep connecting people to their most important people, places and things.
Back in April 2015, Facebook already tried to balance content from friends and pages, depending on what people are most interested in learning about. But what are the values of the News Feed now?
The new values of Facebook’s News Feed
The type of content that people see on their Facebook News Feeds is subjective, personal and unique. With that in mind, Facebook is aiming to deliver to their users the content that they think will be the most relevant to them. Here are the updated News Feed values, Facebook shared on their blog:
- Posts from friends and families – The posts that will now rank highest on News Feeds are the ones published by friends and family. The Facebook News Feed algorithm is going to rank these posts based on previous engagement and post interactions.
- Informative and entertaining posts – Second will come the posts that are meant to inform or entertain. Your news feed will now try to show you content that will be interesting and informative to you personally and content that you may find entertaining.
- Authentic stories – Authentic communication is what the strength of any social network depends on. Therefore, the new Facebook algorithm will try to find and deliver the most genuine stories and posts. It is going to display content that people would like to see more of on their News Feeds.
- Customization – Besides all of the above, the algorithm will give great value to the end-users feedback and the actions they can take to show whether they like or dislike someone’s content. For example, actions as following, unfollowing, hiding or checking off the “see first” option on a page is helping people design their own experience on the network.
All of these sound great for end-users, but what do they mean for brands on Facebook? Will they suffer a decrease in the reach and performance of their posts?
This depends on the posting skills and Facebook strategy that brands have. If brands already managed to post genuine, informative and entertaining posts for their target audiences, they are definitely on the right way. Such pages are believed to not suffer a big change in their Facebook page performance and post reach. If brands, however, did not manage to post appealing and engaging posts for their Facebook audiences, this means that they will be seeing changes in the way the Facebook News Feed algorithm ranks their posts and thus decrease their reach.
The key to appearing more often on your Facebook audience’s News Feeds is to know who they are, what they like and value, what they would like to know more about, what entertains them, and to be genuine in your posting. If you have this goal in mind, then your Facebook audience is still going to find your content relevant and worthy of seeing.
If you use Snapchat to market your business, make sure to check out our article next week, covering the latest updates in the fast-growing network that recently passed Twitter in daily usage.