Facebook’s update: What does it mean for your digital strategy?

If you’ve been engaging in the social media buzz over the past couple weeks, you already know about Facebook’s recent announcement regarding upcoming changes to the news feed *gasp* – check out Mark Zuckerberg’s official statement:

You can read his announcement in full on Facebook. What this means for your news feed is that quality content posted by trusted brands will be more visible, as opposed to paid advertisements from third-party brands. Facebook has been disputing the claim that they’re a media company for years, which likely played a role in leading them to make this change. It appears to be an attempt to bring back the sense of trusted human connection that made their platform successful in the first place.

The update will prioritize posts that initiate conversation and meaningful conversation. Facebook intends to do this by predicting which posts users may want to interact with others about, and make sure these appear at the top of their feeds. They also made it clear that posts from family and friends will take priority over public content.

What does this mean for brands and publishers?

Pages that are creating posts that don’t get as many comments or encourage engagement will be most impacted by this change. These pages will see a decrease in their reach, video watch time, and referral traffic. If your business is already producing content that engages users in conversation, you won’t experience too many negative effects.

The big question here is: how will this affect digital marketing strategy? The key is to make sure you’re publishing quality content that provides support for people and solves problems. This is the material that will is going to prompt conversation and engagement with your brand.

None of this means that paid advertising doesn’t matter. What matters is that your paid advertisements are good, and you’re seeing high share rates. It’s still important to distribute profitable content on Facebook to achieve your business goals.

Creating meaningful content and supplementing that process with paid advertising is the perfect marriage. Combining forces so that boosting published content will inspire conversation is the goal here,” explains King & Columbus Agency Director.

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