Once upon a time, a business could utilize the organic reach of their Facebook Page posts and show up on the news feeds of interested followers. Now, not so much. Chris Crum has put together Everything Facebook Has Said Over The Past Year About News Feed Ranking on WebProNews. He has 18 points from their series of “News Feed FYI” announcements since August of 2013. Here they are:
- Facebook only highlights “major” updates — August 2013
- Facebook prioritizes 300 posts out of the 1,500 or so possible posts — August 2013
- Facebook looks for “high quality content” that is timely and relevant — August 2013
- Facebook suggests news and publishing sites post frequently — October 2013
- Facebook shows more articles, comments & mobile clicks matter — December 2013
- Facebook acknowledges declining organic reach as they focus on quality and suggest advertising — December 2013
- Facebook admits it equates source with quality (whitelisting) — December 2013
- Facebook negates text updates from Pages as being different than text updates from friends — January 2014
- Facebook says the best way to share is by using a link-share — January 2014
- Facebook encourages Pages to tag Pages by saying it will give more exposure — February 2014
- Facebook targets like-baiting, frequently circulated content, and spammy links — April 2014
- Facebook claims organic reach is declining because there’s so much content and they want to be relevant, then suggests ads — June 2014
- Facebook combats click-bait headlines — August 2014
- Facebook doesn’t want Pages to share links in photo captions, encourages link-share links — August 2014
- Facebook insists users are ultimately responsible for what’s on their feed because they choose through activity — August 2014
- Facebook talks about trending topics and their influence on news feed rank — August 2014
- Facebook is more likely to show a new post that gets comments & likes quickly — August 2014
- Facebook hasn’t addressed recent gaming of their algorithm despite queries — August 2014
So, there it is. If your business has been seeing a drop in organic reach on Facebook, this is what Facebook has actually said about how their algorithms are being updated and used. Thanks, Chris Crum, for putting all that work into this! With all the theories floating around, it’s good to look at the list.
Social media marketing is a constantly fluctuating adventure, isn’t it? It’s challenging, but meeting that challenge is what marketing is all about.