Facebook’s News Feed: Why There’s No Silver Bullet to Reach
By: Sean Singh
Tags: Social Media, Digital, Facebook Marketing, Digital Marketing, Facebook

Last week the internet went into a collective panic over the proposition that Facebook could remove non-sponsored page posts from the organic News Feed.

Whilst the story turned out to be much ado about nothing, it did lead to a lot of questions around the importance of News Feed as a channel.

It’s no secret that Facebook is becoming increasingly more pay-to-play for brands, with organic engagements for pages declining around 20% since January. The easy answer to ‘reach decay’ is the sheer volume of content versus the available attention of users.

The Facebook algorithm, a closely-guarded secret that is constantly tweaked to provide the best user experience, is usually a mystery to publishers and advertisers. Many ‘hacks’ exist in an attempt to game the algorithm, with a lot of urban legends over how best to share content — from posting links in comments through to only sharing a minimum amount per week, every social media guru has their own idea on how this works.

Facebook themselves have this week weighed in, with a short video on key actionables to have your content rank better in the News Feed. A condensed version of the ‘Whats New with News Feed?’ presentation given by VP of News Feed Adam Mosseri earlier this year, the information given is valuable to any publisher looking at ways to tweak their social content to generate the best reach and engagement possible.

While not at all a silver bullet in the quest to top the News Feed, there are some important lessons to take away here.

The News Feed is different for each user

Every person values and engages with content differently, thus individuals are served content they are more likely to care about first. Mosseri explains the detail that goes into displaying content in each user’s feed — the algorithm evaluates everything from your likelihood to engage to how much negative feedback the publisher has received before, to how much time you might spend reading a piece of content and even the frequency of posts from that particular user. All of this is calculated and weighted to determine what the post’s score is and whether you’re part of the audience who will see it. There is no ‘gaming’ the system

Engaging content is engaging content, period. Even if you delete a particular post that didn’t get the engagement you wanted, that post will still contribute to your overall performance rating on Facebook. This counts for both organic posts as well as ads — meaning an advertising campaign with poor targeting could hurt your organic engagement too. Having said that, spending money on a post does not guarantee its reach. Many advertisers have experienced frustration when ads with too much text result in a disapproval or limited reach. The same goes for a wealth of other factors that aren’t considered, including your overall engagement levels. The best communication strategy includes a calculated content creation effort, as well as a carefully targeted advertising campaign. Which leads to the next point, which is; Consider engagement

When creating content many event marketers will consider reactions (likes, comments, shares) as a hero metric of success. This can certainly be the case with social-proofing but isn’t always the best gauge. A dynamic carousel with no comments can convert purchasers at $0.82 per purchase, whilst a strong video with hundreds of comments can sell two tickets at $250 per purchase. Facebook will consider and weight both of these metrics in deciding what content will be shown. The official recommendation from Facebook is to ask yourself, “Would people share my story with their friends or recommend it to others?” We agree. Post Frequently

Many event marketers have their own rules on when to post.This is a good way to ensure you’re engaging your community at the times they’re most active. However, rules on how often you post are based on now-outdated data based on how content was previously distributed in the feed. Facebook’s own guidelines now advise publishers to post often, allowing them to increase the chances of the algorithm matching them to their potential audience. So long as your post is “new and high quality”, the frequency of your posts won’t be a penalising factor. Post Quality

Every post has a range of factors that will affect how strongly it ranks in the feed. By raising the quality of your posts you’ll improve your rank and reach. Consider some of these factors:

Website experience

a) How mobile-responsive is the page you’ve linked to? If it doesn’t handle mobile well your reach will suffer.

b) Does the page load quickly? Many internet users will abandon a page that loads slowly. On both mobile and desktop the load time of the page is a crucial factor.

Media

c) Are your videos or photos high quality? Are they compelling? Most high quality images will load quickly with internet speeds and can be buffered at a lower quality if need be.

d) Have you used closed-captioning in your videos? Should you? Accessibility can be a back seat consideration but shouldn’t be — not just for inclusion but for the fact that many videos are watched with no sound on.

e) Is your content appropriate? Does it use overly sexual, violent or malicious imagery? Facebook has cracked down on this content heavily in recent months and this should be a key consideration when creating your content.

f) Do you own the intellectual property of the content you’re sharing? If not, you are potentially at risk of a copyright breach not to mention recycled content will generally rank lower.

Type of Post

g) Is your post timely? Are you capitalising on a trending topic that is no longer relevant? For events, this could mean running key content at your peak publicity moment and not delaying unnecessarily.

h) Is your post clickbait? Do people drop-off quickly when they land on your page or do they stay and engage? The faster people drop off or abandon your site, the more likely it is that your post will be considered low quality.

i) Is the content original or rehashed and dated content? Sharing a post more than once can be good practice to getting your message across but can also be considered spam. Consider other ways to spread the message — perhaps by crossposting a video, or utilising another page.

All of these and more, show just how broad the factors that determine your post’s quality and therefore reach. It may take you just a moment to publish it, but that extra moment of consideration and forward planning could cost you dearly in organic reach.

The reality is that no one who claims to know how to rank you higher in the News Feed can guarantee you results. In the end, you are at the mercy of the audience you’re engaging. With a carefully planned social strategy and a focus on engaging, timely and high-quality content, your chances of reaching your intended targets are much higher than posting simply for the sake of posting.

To learn more about Facebook News Feeds, you can read the News Feed Publisher Guidelines.