One of the most exciting announcements in social media history was made on January 11th this year. The announcement was made in the form of a press release by Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s Head of Newsfeed.
At the beginning of the press release Mosseri inserts the following post by Facebook Founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
After reading Zuckerberg’s post above, you get the point. The last few years of social media marketing, on Facebook in particular, has seen increased use of spam and extreme mass marketing. It clogged the Facebook news feed with nothing less than ‘crap’, and was beginning to choke Facebook.
Zuckerberg in his post does say:
“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.”
Do his words mean this is the end of Facebook marketing and advertising?
To take it that way, would be an incorrect analysis of what he is talking about and a poor understanding of Facebook. Facebook after all still is a publicly listed company, in fact it is the 5th largest company in the world by market capitalisation (as of December 2017). Facebook’s revenues and shareholder value rely largely on advertising revenue in order for it to survive. Zuckerberg is not big enough in his own company to put a stop to that.
Instead, what the above post by Zuckerberg could be interpreted as saying is:
If you are planning on ruining news feeds with click bait material, that is not valuable to users, then this is not going to get very far on Facebook.
From our viewpoint as a marketing agency at Attention Experts, where valuable exchange and engagement is core to our marketing principals, this is very welcome.
This announcement pushes out all the backyard operating social media agencies, poor and deceptive advertising practices, as well as lazy marketing away from Facebook. It allows a true marketing campaign to flourish, and it encourages intelligence to come to the fore.
As a small, medium or large business trying to advertise on Facebook, this is a much welcomed change for you. This means that users are going to be more receptive to Facebook content, and that you can encourage true as well as authentic engagement with your brand/service/products.
In 2018, reviews are going to be key to the marketing process on Facebook. As individuals online are now demanding more authentic engagement, reviews will rule the roost. A solid review strategy will pull you ahead of your competitors online.
Solid engagement strategies utilising relevance, value, inspiration or controversy, will create a solid brand touch point campaign with your business.
What Mosseri goes on to say in his press release, is that
“Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution.”
Here quality of posts will be a larger factor than quantity. Pages making 3-4 or more posts per day, will be greatly affected, if there is no quality of posts.
Businesses, who:
- tell their story,
- are interested in their audiences,
- ready to engage with them, and are;
- ready to know their audiences better.
Are the businesses who will succeed on Facebook marketing moving forward.
What is interesting to note is, Facebook also owns Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The same principals above apply on both these platforms. Profiles, messaging, posts on these platforms could also be considered to become penalised.
For me, this is such a relief to have heard Zuckerberg and Mosseri, announce the above. Facebook was beginning to rack up a lot of garbage. This is definitely going to take Facebook in a direction that is more user-friendly, and from a business perspective, allow a business to create opportunity on the largest marketing platform in the world (with 2.1 billion monthly active users using the platform on average for 20 minutes per day). They just need to be willing to create a professional profile for themselves that is genuinely interested in their audience.
We have already begun to see some changes begin to take effect through Facebook, and many of our client accounts are starting to see benefit.
I highly recommend you book in a strategy session with one of our experts, by calling +61 2 8069 9796 or emailing info@attentionexperts.com. You can also book through www.attentionexperts.com.
To see the full above press release by Facebook, visit this link: newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/
