What kind of content should you post on your Facebook page?
Well, the kind that your audience wants to see, of course. But the parameters of what people see in their News Feed is constantly changing, as Facebook geeks tweak the social network’s algorithms to “show people the most interesting stories at the top of their feed and display them in the best way possible,” according to Facebook’s Product Manager of News Feed Ranking, in order to whittle an average 1,500 updates per day down to a more manageable 300 or so.
Though the rampant pace of Facebook News Feed changes can be frustrating for digital marketers trying to reach their fans, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is actually responding to signals from you, and users like you, based on how and how often you interact with certain types of posts from certain people and Pages.
Apparently, we interact with other people a lot differently than with Brand Pages. (“Perhaps that’s because too many pages don’t act enough like real, reasonable people?” quips my inner cynic.)
“When people see more text status updates on Facebook, they write more status updates themselves,” according to Facebook – to the tune of 9 million more text-only updates per day. But over time, Facebook techs realized this only rang true for text status updates from friends – not Pages.
This led to Facebook’s latest algorithm change, announced this week, which will treat text-only updates from Pages as an entirely different category than text-only updates from friends. Facebook Page Admins, be warned: words alone may reach your fans – because statistically, people engage more with visual content from brands.
Of course, keen marketers were already shaking up the variety of multimedia posts to catch attention in the crowded digital space with photos, videos, and photo albums – which can garner up to x, x, and x % more engagement, respectively. But unfortunately, as Facebook noted, a lot of Pages are still sharing links the old-fashioned way, by pasting an embedded link in a status update, like this:
Sure, it’s a link, but it comes across as text-only – which means your fans won’t see it in their feeds. Instead, Facebook suggests, use link-share to present the link as visual content.
Obviously, the visual link-share is more eye-catching and compelling than a text-only status update with an embedded link – which is why it gets more engagement through likes, comments, shares and clicks. Maybe our English teachers were foreshadowing the future of digital marketing when they kept drilling us to “Show, Not Tell.” Experiment with Facebook’s media-rich tools to share photos, videos, links, graphics and other multimedia content that illustrates your brand message in engaging, captivating, and creatively visual ways.
Facebook Page Admins, share your story: What kind of content do your fans engage with most?
>> Read the original story from Facebook >>