On August 25, 2014, Facebook announced it would "weed out stories that people frequently tell [them] are spammy."
Thank you, Facebook. You read my mind. I've noticed my news feed has been chockfull of "OMG you'll never believe what happened next!!!" posts for the past couple of months and I, like others, have been duped to the point of utter annoyance.
So, great for me, you, and 1.3 billion Facebook users today. But how will this change impact brands and marketers? To cut to the chase, here are my three tips:
1. Don't freak out, unless you were doing shady business to begin with, like adopting click-bait style headlines.
Click-bait posts usually have more sensational headlines and don't reveal anything in the post itself, which force the user to click over to the website to find out details of the story on the actual website. With this update, Facebook wants to maximize the time spend on their site as opposed to acting like a pass-through to other sites. The way the algorithm is looking at how long people spend time away from Facebook is a key indicator here.
Click-bait comes in a few different forms:
- Unearned hyperbole (perfected by Buzzfeed): The 23 MOST painfully awkward things that happened in 2013
- Headlines that are deliberately misleading: Redskins Star Was Wearing a Jesus-Themed T-Shirt Before His Press Conference - Notice Anything Different When He Actually Showed Up?
- Hateclicks: #Scots are a weak and submissive people...
- Deliberately excluding information that could've easily been included: TV Reporter Makes Unbelievable Exit: '"F**k It, I Quit'
2. Let the customer journey be your guide: What do you want the user to do after clicking on your link? Optimize towards downstream behaviors, not just clicks.
Converting customers to a site is only the first, but a very important step. At this point the sites are in full control of the experience (unlike on the social networks) and should leverage that and provide the visitors with reason to come back organically. Online direct marketing (email and banners) always stress the importance of the landing page matching the initial acquisition piece. For example, the creative and language of an offer in an email or banner should be carried forward to the landing page.
This same adage is true in social marketing - the downstream optimization should always consider the goal of the click. For news and media outlets this is often page or video views. In this case, the landing page should provide recommendations for additional content (articles, posts, videos) that relates to the initial content that drove the customer to the site. For retailers featuring offers or promotions in their social posts, the landing page should reiterate the language and creative of the post and make it seamless to complete the conversion event, such as featuring promotion codes on the landing page or ensure they are already added to the cart.
3.Use social media analytics tools to learn what your audience actually wants from you on Facebook and optimize your content strategy accordingly.
The analytics guys and gals at Facebook are always tweaking its algorithm so this shouldn't be a surprise. The update helps ensure the content in users' news feeds are more relevant, timely, and valuable. The last thing Facebook wants is to have their feed clogged up by spammy posts, which would destroy Facebook's value as a place where you stay connected to friends, and hear stories and breaking news that matter to you. To get the most out of your Facebook posts, lean on your analytics solution to:
- Know your Facebook audience. This will be different than the audience you engage with on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. because each platform attracts different user demographics of your customer- and prospect-base
- Strategize what messaging and graphics work for your Facebook audience
- Establish concrete goals for what you want your messaging to accomplish for this audience (engage, comment, share, etc.)
- Try your messaging and content, and if it doesn't work, test and try again
- Analyze your results using KPIs that map to your overarching goals. Use this information to optimize your content strategy accordingly
Impact on Brands:
Facebook has always encouraged brands to focus on sharing relevant and engaging stories with their audiences. This is something most brands are already doing, so you shouldn't be too affected by the algorithm change, unless you've adopted the click-baiting strategies in your headlines or weak, irrelevant content on your landing page where the number of "recommended articles" outnumber the words in the article. That amounts to a bit of shade if you ask me.
If you are a media company and are publishing quality content, you'll be fine. If you're in another industry, like retail or banking, and you are linking to articles relevant to your audience, you'll be fine. I bet most of you won't see much of a change in your reach and engagement data.
But how do you know if your content is relevant and engaging? Social marketing platforms can help you identify top performing posts by reach, engagement, and even downstream behavior on websites. These insights help you understand what content resonates best with your fans, what their demographics look like, what time of day and post type works best, and what kind of business results you're driving through various social interactions.
Impact on Marketers:
For you day-to-day practitioners, you'll need to manage towards quality links. Facebook says they'll show preference towards posts that use the link format, which performs better on small mobile screens.
Most professional, third-party links will have quality metadata which will pull through good images, titles, and descriptions into the post automatically. If you're posting original content links, make sure your web team has optimized that metadata for social, something that should be part of any good SEO practice anyway.
Fortunately, if you run into a crappy link, publishing tools allow you to customize link metadata before publishing it to Facebook. Just keep in mind that you'll want to upload an image sized 600 x 315 px at minimum to ensure it appears as a large image link post in the news feed. Go bigger, 1200 x 630 px, to account for higher resolution screens.
Facebook's preference towards link format will likely cause issues with marketers who typically post a large image and then include the article link in the text caption above the photo. For example, I follow GQ on Facebook and many of their posts follow this format:
I'm positive they have a rich library of original content. And as they post links to original or third-party articles, they attach a photo and add the link to the status update. This approach allows them to have more control over the imagery and brand experience. It also allows them to add add additional tracking parameters if they want. But as a user, you usually don't know where the link will take you to because it's typically been shortened with a link shortener. Facebook says it will favor link format posts over links in status updates; GQ and similar brands using this approach may see reach reduced. That remains to be seen.
Think "Customer Journey"
So how do you earn Facebook's trust and avoid even lower reach and engagement from this algorithm change? My advice would be to stop focusing on the click and think about what you want the user to do after he/she lands on the page. Do you "want" the user to click-through and leave right away? No. You want to provide a payoff for their time. How will that landing page content provide value to your audience? How will their time spent on that page drive engagement, loyalty, and wallet share? Optimize towards these behaviors and trust that Facebook won't mark you as spam.