Facebook to reduce number of business posts on user timelines

Saturday, February 3rd, 2018

Facebook have announced that they will be reducing the number of posts from Business pages from people’s news feeds. This will be done to increase the quantity of posts by friends while scrolling through the social medium. The reasoning behind this, according to Mark Zuckerberg, is that using social media to interact with people we care about can be beneficial, while “passively reading articles or watching videos… may not be as good.”

This change, announced by Mark Zuckerberg via a lengthy Facebook post, means that businesses will be impacted greatly, of course. Facebook has become a major advertising medium and such a decision will change the direction in which the field of online marketing has been steering into.

So what can businesses do in order to keep their Facebook pages thriving and present on their followers’ news feeds?

The focal driver will be interaction, and therefore, page posts on which people interact have a higher chance of popping up on newsfeeds than others that generate less interest. Therefore, posts that trigger a discussion have a higher success rate than mere statements, for instance. Furthermore, Facebook live has proven to generate more interaction because of its real time ‘news value’.

In conclusion, if you want your Facebook Page to survive this major reshuffle in the algorithms governing Facebook’s newsfeeds, then a lot must be dedicated to interaction and engagement with your audience. There is no foolproof recipe for this, however the more communication there is amongst your audience and your page, the higher your chances of not finding yourself sidelined into the dark quarters of Facebook.