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Do you as well wonder why does Facebook constantly keep updating its application every other day for the Android users? The first 2018 update which was in January might indeed be the biggest one of the year. Over throwing the mindset of the News Feed algorithm, a decision by Mark Zuckerberg to change it and prioritize news from family and friends at the expense of public content, marketers, and news publishers is “The Thing” that everyone is talking about.
If you are into Facebook marketing, a thing you might want to know and understand is Facebook algorithm. The Facebook algorithm is quite helpful in the huge number of posts that businesses and people share each day and choose the posts that they want to show in our News Feed based on a number of factors.
A developer might have many things in mind to update the Android App. Mostly it is rolled out when they have an overall bug or when there is a big bug related to a particular group of people like a notable phone which has a problem with the current version of the application due to some specific reason. The improvement in the codes and fixing the bug mostly comes out as a new version. You get to see the details in the Google Play Store while you try to update the application. Facebook, pretty much has same reasons too. And, Facebook is always striving to make it high quality content with the images and other media stuff. Although we have seen many trying to degrade their application to the older version due to various reasons like the older version were faster but unfortunately sometimes they are not able to find any. But the newer version being slow might simply imply that they are taking time to load as they have increased the quality. People generally as the stats go, are very happy to use the apps even when the consumption of internet is high or increased with the update due to the better quality of data and content. There’s 3G, 4G and what not in the market now and apps feel kind of faster. However, the ones using slower internet speed like 2G still find it slow and high loading time. Most of the time, you do not see any significant update when they say “fixed major bugs” in the updated version. They are of course the backend logic and mostly the user interface that you see on your screen remain the same.
Let’s go back to understand what happened in the month of January in the Facebook update. Are you concerned that it might affect your business? Well, you should not be. The usual resolution of “New Year, New Me” has changed into “New Year, New Facebook” at least for Mark Zuckerberg. One of the public posts of Mark Zuckerberg says as on Jan 11, 4:28 PM (PST):
“We’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.
[…] As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.
[…] If we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too.”
So, what are these Facebook Algorithm Values that we have been talking about? Understanding the algorithm of Facebook begins from the point of knowing the core values that Facebook applies to guide their thoughts and work. These could give you a hint of what is the content that does good and what will not on Facebook.
Giving you a brief summary of the new feed value of Facebook:
- Family and Friends come first: More than anything, the objective of Facebook here lies to connect the people via the News Feed which is friends and family. Thus the posts from the friends and families are prioritized on this social media platform. After these, the posts that Facebook finds that people want their feed to inform and entertain others.
- A platform for ideas sharing: All types of ideas are welcome by Facebook like the genuine stories over the misleading ones, or the spammy ones.
- You have a control to your experience: Facebook gives the individuals what they need and what they think is the best for them. Facebook created a feature to “see first” or “unfollow” to let the people customize their preferences and Facebook experience.
- Constant iteration: Like you say, change is the new constant. Similarly, Facebook is determined to constantly collect feedback and put it across for the improvement and ease of the users.
Facebook aims at offering its users a “vibrant” experience but for the advertisers and marketers it becomes more difficult to reach out to their audiences and seek their attention. This is not any disadvantage as it does not mean you will have to face hardships with the ads.
All it aims at is the fact that highlighting the right content to the right audience could make an effective campaign and a big difference in the marketing world.
To make it simple for you to understand the Facebook algorithm, we have a list of factors for your that we assume might have an edge on your posts showing up.
The Facebook algorithm likes when:
- Facebook Posts with lots of Likes, shares and comments
- Facebook Posts that go viral in a short time. For example, the ones receive a high volume of Likes, comments, or shares in a short span of time.
- Facebook Posts that are Liked, commented on, or shared by an account’s friends
- Link posts
- Post types that one networks or interacts with often
- Posts that are well-timed or reference a trending topic
- Posts from Pages that the users interacts with often
- Post types (e.g., photo, status update, or videos) which the users seem to prefer more than the rest. Also, the videos uploaded to Facebook which receive huge number of views or extended viewing duration
- Posts from other Pages with complete legal profile information
- Posts from Pages where the fan group overlaps with the fan group of other known high-grade pages
To wrap it up, the pages might see a decrease in the content of video watch time, referral traffic etc. However, the impact will surely vary from page to page depending on few factors like the type of content they have and how people interact with any particular post.
No one like spammy posts on the social media, especially Facebook like you ask the readers to “comment and share the post” or “like this post if you are …”. Such tactics which are known as “engagement bait” try to seek the advantage of the News Feed algorithm by boosting the readers to get greater reach. Although, according to the Facebook update, more of these posts are expected in the Feed, however, luckily this does not happen. Know why? This is because; Facebook is an intelligent thing where they have created thousands of categories for the posts to have a machine learning model which detects different ways of this engagement bait. Posts which utilize this tactic or methodology will be shown lesser in the news feed. Facebook is getting closer to its mission with each update: giving their users a more meaningful and authentic interaction between the people.
Is Facebook building music communities?
Facebook lately announced their partnership with Universal Music Group, and then the contract of the largest major music publisher in the world, Sony/ATV.These partnerships with the music world give a new music-related experience for the users of Facebook. Also giving new platform for the artists and songwriters to build up a stronger profile and connect to the communities around music.
Facebook’s campaign budget optimization:
Facebook announced this already back in November but the related tests have been going slow, so the features are being rolled out gradually to some Ad Account (take a look at yours!)
But what is budget optimization?
The process which is similar to what is already being done by Facebook with your ads such that depending on the performance of the ads, more budget will be allocated to the “winning” ad by Facebook. Now this allows you to decide to do the same with AdSets too where you set a budget for the entire campaign and mention that you would like to optimize it. According to Facebook, this could be a good solution under the following conditions:
- Set a campaign-level budget and have more flexibility on the expenditure of your budget across the AdSets in the process of campaigning.
- Get the maximum results possible from your campaign.
- Ease the set-up of campaign and save time by lowering the number of budgets you manage manually.
There is so much more to this, but all we know that Facebook is really working hard to get their social media for the right purpose and the right direction. Expect a lot of more big updates from Facebook, however, keep enjoying it as you always did!
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