Marketing on Facebook Gets Tougher after News Feed Changes

 

Facebook’s latest changes to its news feed algorithm are having a huge impact on marketing efforts of brands.

Facebook announced that its news feed will place greater priority on posts from users’ close friends. It will place less emphasis on posts on which users’ friends like or comment. These stories will now appear lower in the news feed or not at all. As an example in its announcement, Facebook offered a favorable user comment on a promotion for a grocery store.

In another news feed tweak, Facebook will relax rules that had prevented users from seeing multiple posts from the same source in a row. That, Facebook says, will improve the news feed for people who don’t have a lot of content available for them.

The impact on company pages will vary considerably depending on their audience and posting activity, Facebook says, but it admits reach and referral traffic from posts could decline in some cases.

Facebook maintains that the changes are designed to improve user experience. Some observers believe Facebook is pushing companies to purchase more advertising by squeezing their organic marketing options. Facebook started changing its rules after it went public in 2012 in an effort to please its investors. After its IPO, it soon opened its news feed to sponsored stories, and then started changing how it ranked content from pages.

If their posts appear less frequently in news feeds, businesses will receive fewer likes, comments and shares and less referral traffic to their websites. As a result, they may be compelled to pay for advertising.

Option: Abandon Facebook

Instead of advertising, businesses could give up and eliminate their Facebook pages altogether. That’s what Eat24, an online food-ordering service, did.

“We give you text posts, delicious food photos, coupons, restaurant recommendations… and what do you do in return? You take them and you hide them from all our friends,” it railed at Facebook on its blog.

“A lot of people supported our decision to leave Facebook, but some people just got really p_ssed off. It seems we struck a chord with our fellow marketers out there,” Eat24 wrote in another blog post a month later.

Other marketers were shocked at the move. Some called Eat24’s decision foolish and accused it of lousy marketing or of being cheap, although it did invest $1 million in Facebook marketing the previous year. Yet a month after the break up, the company was doing just fine, having shifted its emphasis to email marketing. Its email open rates, registrations and replies had doubled.

“Customers can feel totally comfortable emailing us,” it posted. “No one has to worry about us selling their data to companies compiling lists of ‘target demographics.’ Unlike some people we used to date,” Eat24 said in obvious and critical reference to Facebook.

A Wrench in their Assumptions

Other businesses are also frustrated at Facebook’s continual changes and the growing difficulty in reaching customers. Facebook’s attempts to grow its revenue conflicts with marketers need to reach consumers cost-efficiently. Having had a “free ride” on Facebook for some time, many marketers resent being forced into paying for advertising to reach their established audiences on Facebook.

“They feel like they’ve invested a lot to build these audiences on Facebook, and when they publish content, they’re not able to reach people without paying,” said Adam Schoenfeld of Simple Measured said in an article in Medium. “It’s throwing a wrench into their assumptions about Facebook.”

Two years ago, a page update could reach 40 percent of its fans on average, Gallegos said. Now it’s lucky to reach 5 percent. One percent is more common.

Whole Foods Social Media and Digital Marketing Director Natanya Anderson told Medium she’s seen a 50 percent drop in organic reach since the end of 2013. But the supermarket has no intention of deleting the 275 pages it manages.

Bottom Line: Facebook’s latest alterations to its new feed limit the organic reach of company pages. Marketers may need to consider paid advertising or re-evaluate their overall marketing strategy and their relationship with the social media giant.