Having an online presence has become vital to the growth of any business. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have become the go-to social media platforms for online visibility. Despite the success companies enjoy using their online presence to promote their business, there are two words that threaten marketing strategies. The term ‘algorithm changes’ are the two most dreaded words in social media marketing.
Facebook has had several algorithm updates over the years. Every time these changes have affected how business pages interact with their audiences.
n 2018, Facebook’s CEO announced that the new algorithm update would prioritize posts that users can relate to and encourage conversations. With this in mind, Facebook decided that the news feed would have less content from business pages and more from family and friends.
Thus there was a dramatic decline in organic reach. Business and public pages began sharing controversial topics to increase engagement. However, this only lasted until November of the same year. Facebook released another update that demoted posts that were controversial, misleading, or sensational. This resulted in an even bigger dip in organic reach.
The news feed is now all about interaction and engagement. You can try engagement baiting, but eventually, Facebook's AI will catch up with you. The only way to remain relevant is to focus on strong emotions and sharing interesting topics that provoke discussions. Also, share videos as they have a better engagement rate compared to photos and other posts. The algorithm prioritizes video, which, if used correctly, could increase your engagement rate and organic reach. You can use video campaigns or animated content to promote your business.
Typically the number of ads you can have is limited by how much money you're willing to spend. However, this is changing with the newest update. Which limits the number of adverts a brand can run. It's said that the limit will be high; thus, it will have very little to no impact on most pages.
Brands that are affected by this update will have to prioritize ads that have more impact.
Facebook rolled out an update in April 2019, which provided context to why certain ads and organic posts appear on users' news feeds. Facebook is trying to be transparent with how it uses personal data, and this is one of the ways it hopes to achieve this.
The update will have a huge impact on business pages as they will have to evaluate how they interact with their audience. If the audience isn’t interested in your ads, they can choose not to see ads from your brand. The audience can also make changes to their ad preferences and choose the fields they're interested in. There is also the option to choose "I don't want to see this" in organic posts. Meaning you need to be selective in your content and focus on your audience's needs.
These Facebook algorithm changes have made business pages evaluate how they interact with their audiences. Some are going to extreme lengths just to remain relevant and increase engagement. This is why you see the news feed full of videos that have no correlation with the pages that posted them. Pages are trying to get more engagement and increase their follower count by baiting the audience with videos. While this might seem like a great strategy. It actually has minimal impact on your business as most of your followers are there for the videos, not your business. Stick to content that offers value and come up with better ways to interact with your audience. Don’t try to outsmart the algorithm. Instead, use the changes to focus on growing organically. Additionally use ads that are relevant to your target audience, not clickbait.
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