Facebook Announces A Huge News Feed Change

Once again Facebook is making a huge change to how the News Feed works.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a post on Thursday that 2018 will focus on making sure the time we spend on Facebook is time well spent.

He said, “We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness.”

The research indicated that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be positive for our well-being and lead to long term happiness and health. However, passively watching videos and reading articles may not be as good for us.

This change to the News Feed has been spurred on by community feedback stating that posts from brands, businesses and media are crowding the News Feed and making it harder to connect more with each other.

When Will The Change Begin?

Zuckerberg stated that the change of direction started last year and the first changes we’ll see will be in the News Feed. You can expect to see more posts from your friends, family and groups, encouraging meaningful interactions and less content from brands, businesses and media that doesn’t encourage a meaningful interaction.

He gave an example on how this would potentially work, “There are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We’ve seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”

So What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Zuckerberg said, “I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable.”

What can we take from this? Once again Facebook Page reach is under threat. It’s been in decline for many years at the frustration of many business owners, forcing them to spend on boosting posts. However, our view has always been, if you create quality, engaging content you will still reach your followers. We’ve helped businesses create their content and experience a good degree of success.

The important thing to note is that Zuckerberg expects the time spent on Facebook will be more valuable. This could be positive for businesses. Quality time spent on Facebook means that your target audience, and we mean your highly engaged audience that interacts with your content on a regular basis, will see your posts and have a meaningful experience.

There is going to be a lot of panic and speculation over the coming weeks but we think that brands and businesses will need to rethink their social media strategy to be more meaningful and not just a passive experience.

What are your initial thoughts about these changes and what changes are you going to make to your social media strategy?