Alert: Facebook changed its algorithm to send less traffic to content and business Facebook pages. In a Facebook blog post several days ago, Facebook announced that it will prioritize posts shared by friends and family over those from businesses, brands, websites, and other Facebook pages.
The goal of News Feed is to show people the stories that are most relevant to them. Today, we’re announcing an update to News Feed that helps you see more posts from your friends and family. — Adam Mosseri, VP, Product Management, Facebook News Feed
You can and probably will lose Facebook traffic to your pages. How should you respond?
Below are a few things you can do to remedy the loss of your Facebook news feed presence and, thus, the loss of Facebook traffic. Note: This post was inspired by an article on the Fast Company website (Seven Ways Facebook’s Big Algorithm Change Will Affect Marketers and Publishers) written by Joe Lazauskas of Contently.
Facebook Marketing Tips
Post from your personal profile more often. That’s easy for book authors to do since many of us already do most of our posting from our personal profiles.
Encourage your followers. You need to encourage those people who do see your post to share your post (so you can reach their family and friends).
Boost your post. You can, as Facebook notes, “Pay $100.00 to reach 18,000 to 24,000 people with this post.”
Use Facebook ads. Instead of just boosting your post, you could buy Facebook ads (the ones that show up along the side of your Facebook feed). But note that the cost of Facebook’s ads will be going up with this algorithmic change as more marketers compete for the limited ad space. And, of course, Facebook’s profits will go up as well. Facebook already gets over $10 billion in ad sales.
Post an Instant Article. If your page is eligible for Instant Articles, you could try posting a few such articles to see if that increases your exposure. If these Instant Articles lose their priority in the news feed, of course, this strategy will lose its appeal.
Post videos. Autoplay videos still seem to be prioritized in Facebook’s feed, so they can be a great way to work around the new algorithm (if they don’t get hit as well).
Share branded content. If you write about a brand or feature a brand in a video (that is, create a native ad for that brand), Facebook’s new rules require you to tag that brand in your Facebook posts. If you’re not buying traffic to your post, this tagging might actually get more attention for your post from people who like that brand. But, note, any brand tagged in your post can also see the traffic metrics for that post.
Expand your family and friends. Expand your mind. Instead of following only your family and like-minded friends, find some people who think differently from you and follow them. That could help you avoid the like-minded echo chamber on Facebook. And it could help you to expand your reach to people who would not normally see your posts.
About John Kremer
John Kremer is author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, the Relationships Matter Marketing program, and many other books and reports on book marketing, Internet marketing, social media, and book publicity. -- John Kremer on Book Marketing.
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