Massive New Facebook Page Changes that you Need to Know About!

If you haven’t heard yet, Facebook rolled out new changes on January 11^th, 2018, that will – not could – will impact your Facebook page marketing.

Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement that stated he wanted to bring Facebook back to being more personal, more about the friends and family connections and less business items, which according to his statement, it was intended to be for initially. “We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us.”

He is introducing less promotional items in the newsfeed algorithm as per his statements below:

“But recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.”

So, hang on to your chair because things are about to really change.

The Facebook Newsroom released this statement shortly afterwards and elaborates on the changes that we are to expect – https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/

Here’s what I think this could mean moving forward:

If you want to promote your business and your Facebook business page like you used to, with these news changes, then you’ll have to pay for it using Facebook Ads – period.
For the posts we do send out, getting them seen by fans consistently will mean asking your readers to click on “See First in News Feed” on your page. Or possibly creating a Facebook Group if you don’t already have one for your fans.
The less we are using Facebook to me, means more focus on Twitter, Google+, Instagram and LinkedIn or whatever other social media platforms you use.
It could mean there will be less people using Facebook or not staying on Facebook as long, because of this or leave it altogether.
You can introduce live video posts as video seems to rank high in the news feeds and it inspires more comments and interaction between people which is now key on Facebook page posts that will appear in the newsfeed.
Making your social media posts (including promotional ones) more interactive. You will need to write your posts in a way that entices people to comment on it. If page posts have lots of discussion between people it will remain high in the news feed. In fact, the more comments mean the higher it will rank. But keep in mind, any “engagement baiting” will be strictly forbidden.
Cut back your posting to one post a day – yes one – if you do more they likely will not be seen.
We will need to do more live posting on Facebook and not use a scheduling software. Posting directly in Facebook will be more effective.

And the biggest item I believe that should happen is, a stronger focus on your own marketing items. Ones that you ‘own’ such as newsletters, blogs, your website and other emails. Remember your mailing list is your Direct connection to your subscribers. No one can alter, update, change or remove this but you! If you don’t blog weekly, maybe now is the time to reconsider this.

Now yes, these are huge changes, and yes it feels like our pages are going to fade into oblivion but don’t panic, try using a tip or two above and see what results you get. It may mean testing and trying new tactics out before you find what works for your page.