Are you aware of how your business will be affected?

Facebook now prioritises posts that create meaningful conversations, especially those from family and friends. To ensure that the time users spend on Facebook is time well spent, Facebook has made changes to their News Feed algorithm. People now have more opportunities to interact with the people they care about.

Facebook believes the person-to-person connection is more valuable than the person-to-page connection.

So what does this mean for business owners? Facebook is making it even harder for business pages to be seen in news feeds – even if someone has liked the page. In fact, the number of ‘Likes’ you have is pretty much redundant now.

The Algorithm Break-Down

The algorithm is broken down into four components. These focus on providing Facebook users with a better overall experience:

• Inventory – The content available
• Signals – Considerations about the type of content
• Predictions – Considerations about the person and what they’d be interested in
• Overall Score – How the content has ranked based on the above

In the past, Facebook used multiple signals to determine which posts would be shown to users in their news feeds. Now, the algorithm will use signals that heavily favour ‘active’ interactions, such as comments and shares.

So you need to make your content conversation-worthy and share-worthy. Not an easy feat – but there are ways to achieve this!

1. Go Live!

As Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed at Facebook, wrote in a January press release:

“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.”

Although they are scary, I highly recommend going live more often on your business page! It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, but you’re more likely to attract engagement and comments, and commenting is at the very top of the new 2018 Facebook Algorithm. Do you currently do live videos? What’s holding you back?

2. Avoid Engagement Bait

Do not get caught up in creating ‘engagement bait’ posts. You know the ones – those posts that say ‘Tag a friend that deserves to win this prize!’ or ‘Shout out ‘YES!’ if you love your mum!’ which urge people to comment.

This will result in a demotion of your posts in the news feed. I’m actually happy about this one because I agree that those posts can be bloody annoying!

3. Share the Love

After commenting, the next ranked in the new Facebook algorithm for 2018 is sharing.

So you need to understand your audience on a deeper level. Consider what type of posts they are likely to share among friends and family.

• What are your audience’s challenges?
• What are your audience’s motivations?
• What does your audience love to interact with?
• What does your audience care about?

With that in mind, I recommend one of the following post formats –

• Motivational quotes
• Questions related to your field or your audience’s challenges, interests, etc. to encourage responses
• Videos!

Feeling the pressure? I don’t blame you! But the third main signal that Facebook factors into their algorithm is reactions. So if people don’t comment or share on a post, at least there is some hope to be seen with a simple reaction!

4. Create a Facebook Group

Did you know that people see notifications for posts in Facebook Groups, but they don’t get them for Pages?

Groups provide the perfect opportunity to build an active and engaged community around topics, issues, and causes that your audience cares about. AND they generate conversations among your audience – which is exactly what you want!

So if you want to be discovered in the sea of news feed content, you need to board the Facebook Group boat. Create an open space where people can collaborate and share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend creating a community via a Facebook Group for your business!

How are you dealing with the 2018 Facebook Algorithm update? What steps are you taking to be seen?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below!

Leanne

• Source: This blog post has been compiled thanks to the fantastic article by Buffer Social.