Facebook Newsfeed 2018: What You Need to Know

Last month, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder and CEO, announced that a complete overhaul to the Facebook newsfeed is coming soon. He said that the goal of these changes is to provide Facebook users with more meaningful and positive content. If your small business uses Facebook, these changes will make a huge impact on how you reach your audience. Here are five big changes that are coming soon.

Your newsfeed will show fewer viral videos and news articles from media companies.

The changes to Facebook’s newsfeed will deliver less “passive content”, according to Mr. Zuckerberg. “Passive content does not result in meaningful user interaction but instead is simply consumed for informational or entertainment purposes,” according to Social Report, a social media scheduling company. Passive content includes viral videos, news articles, etc. Instead, more meaningful content, such as posts and photos by family and friends, will show up on your news feed.

Facebook now wants to be "good for your well-being."

In a recent interview, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “This big wave of public content has really made us [at Facebook] reflect: What are we really here to do?” He said that his family life, including his two daughters, has caused him to rethink his legacy. In addition, Facebook has recently been under fire the last few months because the current newsfeed algorithm prioritizes news articles. Some of these, specifically those that involved the most recent U.S. election, have been misleading or fake.

In the near future, page posts from brands and publishers will be scored differently from posts from friends.

Facebook calculates a post ranking score for each status update to determine which status updates you see in your news feed and in what order they appear. Currently, this algorithm accounts for engagement metrics such as “likes”, clicks, comments, and post shares. The goal has been to encourage you to spend as much time on Facebook as possible. Moving forward, the goal is instead to make the time you spend on Facebook more valuable. The new newsfeed will reduce posts from publisher pages by as much as 5x. Instead, posts from family and friends will be much more prominent. 

Ad prices will skyrocket.

As people begin to spend less time on Facebook, there will be less ad inventory to purchase. In addition, some brands and publishers that have relied on organic reach in the past will likely need an increased ad spend to reach their target audience. This combination of a decreased supply of ads and greater competition among advertisers will certainly lead to more expensive ad prices. Social Report estimates that Facebook ad costs have increased by 41% in the last year already due to increases in popularity. This new change will cause even greater increases.

Publishers that resort to engagement-baiting will be punished.

Currently, many advertisers attempt to bait users into engaging with their content; they may offer a coupon code or other incentive for liking or sharing a post in order to create artificial engagement. In the future, Facebook will punish these advertisers by demoting their post rank.

These upcoming changes to Facebook mean that having a social media manager running your campaign will be even more valuable. At Evolve Impact Group, we work to stay on top of the ever-changing world of social media and adjust our strategy for your brand as needed to ensure that you are making an impact.

Evolve Impact Group offers personalized solutions for your business to ensure improved market presence and sustainable, long-term impact in the marketplace. Contact us today to learn more!

Sources: https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/goodbye-facebook-news-feed-10-things-publishers-need-to-know-about-news-feed-armageddon.html, https://www.socialreport.com/insights/article/360000016203-5-Things-You-Need-to-Know-About-the-New-Facebook-Newsfeed-in-2018?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Jan%2018th%202018%20-%20Newsletter