Can brands learn to ‘like’ changes to Facebook?
When the world’s biggest social network introduced a new piece of code this year, it had a bigger effect on business than most pieces of computer language.
In September, Facebook’s launched its EdgeRank algorithm to govern which posts end up in fans’ newsfeeds. To reach beyond a fraction of core followers, brands now have to pay for a Premium feature.
Social media experts were furious at Mark Zuckerberg for cutting off their streams of free advertising. Jeff Doak, Head of Social Measurement at ad agency Team Detroit said it was costing pages 45 per cent in average on page views – an ad man’s nightmare.
“Facebook can fix this at any time, and may be forced to, considering the backlash they are about to receive from the very advertisers that are practically their sole source of revenue,” fumed Doak.
But a month later, opinion is warming to the changes, which reduce spam and tailor posts to what the user is likely to engage with.
What relevance?
In a rebuke to its critics, Josh Constine at TechCrunch noted that Facebook has always filtered content for relevance, so it’s not that big a deal. Ultimately, he said: “Facebook doesn’t want to show its users spam so it limits the reach of spammy pages.”
Perhaps to appease advertisers, Facebook has introduced its new Pages feed for businesses on the left hand side of the page.
By siphoning off promotional materials into a separate box, however, the site is asking users to actively choose to see updates from businesses, most of which will be filtered out of the news feed.
But this could still be good news for brands which have tight interactions with their fans.
Pete Goold, Managing Director of Punch Communications said: “As an increasing number of brands learn the impact of EdgeRank, particularly as its recent tightening has seen a further decrease in reach, it’s important to consider the opportunities to get ahead of the game with Pages feed.
“Whilst brands should always be thinking about how they engage and inspire their audience, the roll out of Pages feed and subsequent interest this will hold for users offers a novel and overt opportunity to remind users why they ‘liked’ the brand page in the first place.”
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