What Facebook news feed changes mean for small business owners

Facebook made many digital marketers shudder when they announced some significant changes to their news feed algorithms. In an effort to increase engagement, Facebook will be featuring content from friends and family over content from businesses and pages.  The official reason for making the change was to go back to Facebook’s roots of bringing people together. That is one perspective, while some of us might also see this as a great way to squeeze more money from business owners. Either way, marketers will need to take note of these Facebook news feed changes and make adjustments in order to continue to reach current and new customers.

Unless you make adjustments to your Facebook strategy you can absolutely expect to see your referral traffic decrease. Click To Tweet

Despite some recent reports, it appears that they will not be completely eliminating posts from business and pages from the news feed, that will be putting an emphasis on post that create engagement. Through their recent press release, Facebook executives admit that pages “may see their reach, watch time and referral traffic decrease.” Translated, that means unless you make adjustments to your Facebook strategy you can absolutely expect to see your referral traffic decrease.

What changes should you make to your social media marketing?

Quality over quantity.

Focus less on posting to be seen and instead spend more time crafting posts that encourage engagement and discussion with your Facebook audience.   Content is still king when planning your social media calendar.  Continue to provide engaging and relevant content that adds value to your audience and it will pay off.

Use more video, and post your video live.

According to Facebook, posting shares increase by six times with live video versus regular videos. And they reward video with better placement. Whether you’re doing a regular video podcast show or just occasionally posting a Facebook Live video from your phone or computer you’re going to reach a more significant audience than with a traditional post.

Increase your Facebook ads budget.

You should be regularly running Facebook ads to your target audience, reaching potential customers directly. The latest news about the news feed changes definitely mean that we need to put more of a focus here.

Post as yourself.

As a small business owner you are the face of your business. Facebook is a place for interacting with customers and building relationships, so avoid hiding behind your brand and start interact directly as yourself more regularly. Be careful about too much sales type messages on your personal profile as you can expect people to start muting you or even on following you if that happens.

Invest in other social media platforms.

Just because Facebook is the largest social media platform doesn’t mean they are the only one in the game.  Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube offer alternative ways to interact with your audience.  Use them and experiment to find a mix that works for you and gets results.