Every now and again, Facebook announces changes to its platform, marketers take notice, make relevant changes to social media strategies and carry on. Not this time…

The latest announcement featuring the changes to the Facebook News Feed algorithm was a little bit different. It sent shock waves. And it left many asking… ‘How is this going to affect businesses and their respective marketing activity on Facebook in 2018 and beyond’.

As social media managers across the world came back to work from Christmas/New Year break, The Social Network strategically gave everyone 1 week of easing into 2018 before delivering the announcement. Perfect timing, as we are all now working to finalise our client’s strategies for the next 12 months.

In the announcement delivered on Friday 11th of January, CEO & Founder Mark Zuckerberg delivered the following statements:

“We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness.”

Zuckerberg went on further to reveal what the new changes will look like:

• “Based on this, we’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.

• We started making changes in this direction last year, but it will take months for this new focus to make its way through all our products. The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.

• As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.

• For example, there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We’ve seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”  Click here to view full announcement

So what does this mean for businesses on Facebook? Well, we are still dissecting the announcement as there is alot of speculation and no one knows what this all looks like just yet.

But there are a few words that stand out and set a common theme and they are…

COMMUNITY, PEOPLE & CONVERSATION

There’s going to be a decline in preference on News Feed for passive posts that drive little interaction among the community. Generating conversations will now be key and finding new ways to converse with audiences will be an important way forward for businesses to continue to achieve high reach numbers on their Facebook business pages.

Live streaming, video posts and Facebook groups will become more relevant for achieving the meaningful 2- way conversations Facebook is looking for.

So, with great change brings about great opportunity to evolve and rise above the News Feed fog. Here at Xpand online we see and feel this is where we have been headed for some time now… And the possibilities to explore new ways of producing content excites us.

We have always been committed to creating content that sparks conversations, engagement and adds significant value to our client’s audiences.

As the news continues to unfold and more information becomes available regarding the upcoming changes to the Facebook News Feed, we look forward to sharing it with our own community.

Would you like Xpand Online to help you engage better with your Facebook audience?

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