Facebook is always seeking to create a better experience for its users. Notice how I said for the users and not for marketers. I’m more of a social media gal myself, but Jason, he’s an SEO guy and he’s been saying the same about Google for years. Google & Facebook care about making their usability smooth and beneficial to the people using it. Why? So they come back for more and more. Makes sense, right?
While as marketers, we’ve scoffed at all the updates Facebook brought about as we saw organic reach decline. We’ve rolled our eyes when they announced promoted posts would be pushed down the line. We’ve been confused, aggravated, and annoyed because it has always seemed that they’ve made it harder to connect with our earned fans.
Today, things change again. But for once, I’m very optimistic about the change as the benefits marketers and fan pages may see can have a positive outcome on your social efforts. Facebook will update the app to allow users to decide what they see first in the News Feed.
As a user you can take control of what you see often, what you want to see more of, what you want to see less of and discover new pages. The two things that should get you excited are “prioritize who to see first” and “discover new pages”. These two features can be powerful for you to embrace and to get your content seen by fans who matter, who care, and who are actually capable of making a purchase.
Prioritize Who To See First
This feature is something you should actively campaign to get people using and choosing your page as one of their favorites. Of course if your content sucks, it’s not going to get you very far, however, if you have an active following already it shouldn’t bee too tough to get people to give you their vote of confidence. If your posts see little to no reach, you may want to advertise for a bit and sponsor posts encouraging people to prioritize you.
Discover New Pages
This will pull data and determine which content you consume on a regular basis and start showing you similar pages for you to decide if you want to follow them. Considering your page will be shown to people who like the same stuff as your fans it can be a really nice way to organically grow your following with likeminded individuals. This may turn into a pay to play option, but for now it looks promising.
Of course all this is brand new and there is no way of telling how it will really affect business pages until it is tested. But I’m excited to see a positive change. What about you?
