Facebook News Feed Changes Are Happening Right Now

By Sean Markey on 23 Jun 2015

The powers that be at Facebook, or rather Ansha Yu and Sami Tas (who are both software engineers employed by the social media giant), have announced that the site is currently going through yet more News Feed algorithm changes.

As most people who operate Facebook pages for business will no doubt know, the last big Facebook News Feed algorithm update was rolled out toward the end of April earlier this year. This particular update was seen as a 'double-whammy' against businesses which were trying to use Facebook, which is regarded as the world's most popular social networking website, as a means of engaging with a large audience. The reasons why this News Feed algorithm negatively affected digital markers were twofold;

It switched the focus of the Facebook News Feed to place more importance on personal accounts (as opposed to pages which represented companies, fan bases, local businesses etc.), meaning that posts by people's friends would appear in more prominent positions on the News Feed, while posts by non-personal pages appeared further down.
The algorithm update also meant that interactions (likes, comments, shares etc.) between friends' accounts and pages which they were not already actively following (ie: pages which they liked) became much less likely to show up in News Feeds. This severely diminished business pages' ability to be seen by people who were not already following them, ie: potential new fans/customers.

The reduced ability to have posts seen by both fans and non-fans alike meant that business pages' posts were reaching far less people than they had in times gone by. A study published by Locowise indicated that the average organic reach for a post by a Facebook page was approximately 4.11% during the month of April. Many felt that this was a cynical ploy by Facebook to encourage businesses to spend more money on boosted posts and Facebook ads.

Facebook's June News Feed Algorithm Update

Naturally, when word of the currently ongoing (it is expected to take a few more weeks before the full roll out is complete) Facebook News Feed algorithm update got out, many digital marketers reacted negatively to the news, fearing that their already severely diminished organic post reach would be slashed once again.

Speaking on behalf of Facebook, Yu and Tas stated that they "do not expect Pages to see significant changes in distribution as a result of this update". Such words are no doubt of small comfort to digital marketers who would have hoped (but not expected) to see their organic reach improve due to the new update.

What will change re: the new News Feed algorithm update?

This new algorithm update to Facebook's News Feed could represent a significant game changer for digital marketers who are using Facebook as a means of reaching people via the social media platform. In a nutshell, the key changes are the following:

Social interactions (likes, shares, comments etc.) are set to become less valuable.
Time spent on linked pages will become more valuable.
Loading speed will also be taken into consideration.

The logic behind making time spent on page after clicking a link more valuable is to reward content which people are actually taking the time to read and make the News Feed more centred around, well, news! Think about it; when you click into an interesting article that you want to read you may end up spending around 10 minutes on the page. The new Facebook algorithm recognises that this is a strong indicator of content that really matters to people.

Under the old News Feed model, people's Facebook homepages were getting filled up with memes, images, spammy competitions and all sorts of other pointless nonsense which received a lot of likes and shares, but didn't really offer people anything in terms of genuine long-term value (I have still yet to win an iPad...). Facebook had been interpreting people haphazarly liking a picture of, for example, a cute dog as being more valuable than them reading an enlightening news article which they enjoyed and obtained valuable information from.

Under the new model, articles of long-term value are rewarded more heavily than 'quick fixes'. This may also go some way to putting an end to those tediously click-baited posts ("A Man Walks Into The Shop - What Happens Next Will AMAZE YOU") which rarely fulfill their promises and usually offer little more than thin content skimmed from elsewhere, resulting in low time spent on page ratios and frustrated web surfers.

In order to stop the News Feed algorithm's time spent on page data being skewed by slow loading times (inadvertently rewarding poorly structured websites which take a long time to load), those crafty engineers at Facebook have worked a solution for that into the new algorithm too. It will be able to detect slow loading times and ensure that time spent waiting for a page to load (whether it is due to slow internet connection or a poorly constructed web page) does not positively count toward the important time spent on page valuation.

The thought of social interactions becoming less valuable (bear in mind that their ability to reach wider audiences was already diminished in the April News feed algorithm update) is no doubt something which will cause concern for digital marketers. Those who practice content marketing in particular view these social signals as a key performance indicator as well as a means of having their content reach more potential customers organically.

What can Digital Marketers do to have the new Algorithm Update work in their favour?

To borrow what seems like a very old adage from Google, just make great content! While that will almost certainly sound like a cop-out to many people (and Cop Outs are bad), as far as this News Feed algorithm update is concerned, that's exactly what you need to do. Writing articles that hold people's attention for as long as possible will do much more good than using a wacky headline and a funky image that will encourage people to click the 'like' button without necessarily dropping in to rea the content properly (Honestly, how many times have you 'liked' a share of a satirical article without actually clicking the link itself?).

Now, that is not to say that Facebook interactions will be totally worthless - they are still going to be a fairly important part of how the Facebook News Feed judges popular content, just not as vital as they were in the past. Obviously, we could talk all day about what exactly makes a piece of content 'great' and, in the grand scheme of things, words like 'great' are totally subjective. It's all about what your target audience really and what engages them specifically. For example, an article about the latest Transformers comic, now matter how in-depth or well researched, is not likely to engage the readers of a fashion blog - it's just not their (clutch) bag!
transformers wearing clothes (Rumbled for their lack of fashion sense, the Autobots were forced to flee in disgrace)

Of course, any content marketers worth their salt were already striving to make quality content that interests, excites and engages their audiences (with language like that, I think I've been hanging out at Google HQ too much!), so these changes to the Facebook News Feed algorithm really shouldn't be all that scary to them. In fact, one could argue that it will help sort the wood from the trees and allow really good writers / content marketers to rise above the clutter and bring an overall better quality of content to the people that matter.

In short, keep being great and you have nothing to worry about!

Yu and Tas' full statement in relation to the new Facebook News Feed algorithm update can be read here in its entirety. Wolfgang Digital will be keeping a close eye on Facebook's ongoing algorithm changes as well as all other digital marketing goings on. If you'd like to keep in touch, see what we think or simply nerd chat with us (we post images with supposedly funny captions smattered over them!), feel free to follow our Twitter account.

- Sean