It’s important that businesses are keep up to date with frequent Facebook changes, because they can affect how to approach interacting with customers and what social content to post. Facebook states that all of their changes are made to create the most positive experience for their users. But as well as its social users, Facebook wants to make sure that businesses can target and contact the relevant customers easily through the network.
One main reason the changes to the newsfeed have been made is because of the increase in photos being purely news feed stories rather than embedded in statuses. Any increase in visual aspects is a positive note for business marketing. Photos and visual elements, such as a large advert, can be more detailed. More information for a business marketing campaign can be included in just one post, rather than a number of smaller images.
Changes to page likes
A wider newsfeed has also lead to a recent change in what appears when a user ‘likes’ a page. Instead of simply showing the name of the page, which anyone could quickly scroll past, the name, header image, profile image and amount of likes also appears.
Ultimately, it is the same as what appears when users now become friends. The addition of seeing the profile and header images are likely to attract more ‘likes’ for businesses promotional pages because it appears more eye catching to viewers when scrolling through the newsfeed. This means new customers who may not have noticed the page before are hopefully more enticed.
Changes to video
Videos are always a popular marketing strategy for businesses. Similar to images, the wider timeline advantage means videos stand out more, leading to more frequent views. If a user shares your video, the focus of the story will be on the video featuring a large viewing screen, rather than focusing on the user who has posted it. This, again, means attracting new customers as well as existing, because a user who may not yet ‘like’ your business’s page will spot it through a shared link.
Story bumping
More good news for business marketers is the introduction of ‘story bumping’. If Facebook thinks a user will find an older story interesting, then based on their likes and page views, it will automatically push the story to the top of their newsfeed. Similarly, if a story has a lot of interaction and comments but was posted a day of two ago it will be moved to the top of the news feed so more people can be involved. For marketers this means less stress about timing a post right, as they will reap the benefits of a post that creates lots of interactions.
Conclusion
Overall it seems Facebook’s newsfeed changes will have a positive effect on business marketing. These recent changes should encourage businesses to get the best out of the visual elements of their Facebook page. The header image and profile picture should be engaging and appropriate, as this is what users will immediately see when a friend of theirs ‘likes’ the page and will hopefully encourage others to like it.
Marketing campaigns should focus majorly on attractive advertising images and videos that are interesting to watch. Obviously marketing shouldn’t solely be visual, a sentence or two with the image will inform the user, in short, what it is about. But the fact that Facebook is beginning to focus a lot less on text and more on images should tell a business to avoid positing paragraphs of text. The more appealing a marketing image seems, the more likely it is that a user will stop scrolling through the newsfeed and take interest.
By Content Contributor – Alice Hughes
