Facebook is Changing Their Algorithm (Again): What You Need to Know

If you haven’t heard the news yet, Facebook is making major changes to their algorithm. Again. These changes will directly impact all business pages. You can read the full statement on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page, but here are the highlights:

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.

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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.

What does this mean for business pages? Well…

Less Focus on Reach, More Focus on Engagement

These changes are going to prioritize meaningful interactions such as comments and shares over views. Facebook’s Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri has said that Facebook will be weighing long comments more than short comments.

Promoting Facebook Content, Not Outside Content

This change will devalue external links – links to blog posts, news, etc. To what extent they’ll be devalued is unclear, but we know that they’ll take less priority in the feed.

Short Videos Are Out, Long Videos are In

We’ll likely see fewer promoted videos and more live videos that encourage engagement in the newsfeed. Instead of pumping out short, snappy videos focus on longer-form videos that provide value.

In short, if you’ve fallen into a rhythm of posting same-y content, you’ll need to drastically re-evaluate your strategy. The main takeaway from these changes is you need to inspire discussion on your content, not just views and likes. 

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