If you’re managing a page already you may have noticed a drop in post reach – your posts may not be getting as many views or as much engagement as they used to. This is because of an important change in Facebook’s algorithm. At the start of this year Facebook began to:

“Shift ranking to make newsfeeds more about connecting with people and less about consuming media in isolation”.

As a result, marketing content was poised to take a backseat to content by friends and family – a value that Facebook says it originally had, and it’s trying to return to.

What does that mean for your business page?

Well there is still a lot that you can do to counteract these changes, like being selective in what you post, finding good times to post (posts during the day may not reach as many as posting in the evenings) and putting money behind your posts (boosting).

Facebook has identified that live videos will rank higher in a newsfeed than other content as well as videos with higher watch and completion rates. Today Facebook rewards the content that produces person-to-person content. Facebook’s goal is to display newsfeed content that reveals connections between each user. In other words to organically (without paying) get your posts to show in newsfeeds the content has to get likes, comments and shares, the more the better. Keep in mind the algorithm change doesn’t completely eliminate your posts from newsfeeds, but this update does set new priorities for what content will get prime newsfeed real estate.

These are:

·      If the content is shared over Messenger

·      If the content is liked or commented on

·      If the content receives multiple replies

·      “Meaningful” interactions between users (see below)

Content that is shared and liked is what Facebook considers to be more “meaningful”. So encourage fans to like and share your content, ask questions that encourage people to comment or run a competition where comments are asked for.

Facebook will eventually become all paid content so mixing up a little paid content with your organic posts gives you a head start.

Talk to us about getting more engagement on Facebook.