Facebook News Feed Algorithm Changes…Again

Hold on to your hats, folks. Facebook issued News Feed algorithm changes again and community managers everywhere are fighting the urge to melt their faces off.

The previous Facebook algorithm change, which rolled-out a couple of months ago, responds to activity across your News Feed, including friends and brand interactions. Community managers hustled Facebook Insights to optimize page visibility based on when fans are online and current interaction trends.

Now, this new algorithm endeavors to present more “high quality content” in News Feeds, keeping news articles and current events at the top of News Feeds. ”High quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently,”Facebook explains in its blog.

What This Means for Brands

Unfortunately, this means the news article from CNN about healthcare reform will likely trump brand page posts. With traffic from Facebook to news sites tripling in the past year, it comes as no surprise that Facebook wants to tango heavily with media and news outlets in what seems to be an effort to out-perform Twitter as the go-to source for current events.

Facebook has not revealed how the formula will recognize "high quality content," but they promise the demotion of memes and uninformative over-shared links. This could create a nice organic middle-ground position for brand posts between news articles and memes, but I wonder how the formula will differentiate between a viral media meme and a viral brand media post.

I see the difference, but will the algorithm?

How to Beat the Algorithm…Again

With Facebook staying mum about how the algorithm works, making it very challenging to find ways to use it advantageously. It seems the change is one more push from Team Zuckerberg for brands to invest more in Facebook advertising in order to compete with media outlets. In good news, the algorithm change includes an updated bumping feature, meaning quality and/or promoted posts could continue to bump to the top of News Feeds with each new Comment and Share, making it more important than ever for brands to create frequent quality content. With high-engaging content, brands with promoted posts could see an increase in reach with this interaction-centered bumping based on Comments and Shares.

Hopefully Facebook will loosen its grip on the how and why of the News Feed change and we will know more about optimizing the updated algorithm for brand success.

Instagram, Twitter or Facebook Advertising – Which Is Best for Brands?

With last week’s announcement that Instagram advertising is coming in the near future (first through a limited test among U.S. users), brand marketers have taken notice. There will soon be a new way to reach the 150 million Instagram user audience. Ads will roll out with a small number of brands on both the Instagram website and mobile app with a focus on enhancing the user experience with ads.

An Instagram blog post explained the upcoming advertising launch to users as follows:

“Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine.”

Instagram users will also be able to hide ads they don’t like and provide feedback on those ads.  Let’s hope that the Instagram team will take many of the lessons its parent, Facebook, has learned about advertising to deliver a strong offering to advertisers that its user audience accepts.

Not only is Instagram joining Facebook in building an advertising platform that will generate revenue, but the announcement comes at the same time news of Twitter’s initial public offering hit the streets. In the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing from Twitter, the company revealed that it has 218 million monthly active users. Yoree Koh and Suzanne Vranica of The Wall Street Journal explain that this is significantly less than the 1.5 billion active monthly users that Facebook boasts. That 218 million Twitter user audience represents 22% of U.S. Internet users according to Forrester Research, but that’s very small compared to the 72% of U.S. Internet users who check Facebook at least once per month.

Koh and Vranica also explained in their article that Twitter advertisers don’t believe an audience of 218 million users is big enough to invest in Twitter advertising. Today, Twitter usage peaks during big events, and the rest of the time, it’s dominated by a small group of power users. Many advertisers are waiting for Twitter to find better ways to increase engagement among wider audiences and to encourage them to log in more frequently.

These shortcomings make most consumer brands choose Facebook first. Of course, Facebook advertising has its own long list of problems, but today, it’s the social network that most brands prioritize. Is it truly the right place for those brands to invest ad dollars or do they just think they have to be there because the Facebook user audience is so big and the site is so popular? For brand marketers, the problem becomes trying to explain why they’re not advertising on Facebook to executives.

So which is best for brands—Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? The answer is, there is no single answer. Every brand is different, but advertising on Facebook because that’s where 1 billion people are doesn’t mean the investment will drive a positive return. The Super Bowl gets massive viewership each year, but that doesn’t mean every brand should advertise during the big game. If you can create a highly relevant offer and release it at the right time and to the right audience on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, then invest. However, as with all marketing investments, if you can’t generate the needed ROI, it doesn’t matter if there are 1 billion users, 218 million users, or 100 users.