It is fair to say that election scandals and fines for data breaches have resulted in Facebook going through something of a rocky period.
But the social media giant’s owner has declared a change is on its way- and it is sure to have an impact on your company’s Facebook advertising.
No need to panic – the ATTAIN team have got the lowdown:
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has set the tone saying: “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.”
Zuckerberg is intent on cleaning up Facebook’s image by backing up his statement with a multi-channel marketing campaign: TV adverts declaring “We didn’t come here for clickbait, spam or fake news” and news ads that stress their new focus on personal social interaction have been released to counter widespread distrust after privacy and election tampering scandals. Now, the giant has announced it will be launching a ‘time well spent’ function, to encourage users to avoid zombie scrolling and instead use the platform to actively communicate with friends.
What does this mean for your company?
Ever-changing algorithms can leave social media managers screaming into their MacBooks but with 1.98 billion monthly active users, but it is essential to get to grips with the recent changes in order to make the most of the world’s biggest social media platform.
Posts that generate discussion among users and quality of interaction rather than time spent on the platform will be rewarded in the new algorithm. Get engaging with your customers, replying to comments and taking part in communities and communicating with other brands: the key is achieving comments and shares rather than passive likes.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, recently announcing a new commitment to transparency, said: “We spent the first decade, 12 years, really focused on building social experiences and what we’ve learned across a number of really hard issues from election interference to fake news to data privacy is that we underinvested in prevention and we underinvested in proactively policing the ecosystem that we had built.”
Several innovations have been unveiled to help users feel more in control of the information they see- and help to spot manipulation and bias. Info and Ads from Company Pages will show the date the Page was created and its history of name changes so that users can understand the purpose for which the Page was originally created – and spot any spam.
Facebook has hinted that video, especially ‘live’ content, will be well rewarded in the new algorithm, as they tend to provoke responses. Video content is still huge but not in terms of length. The maximum time available is 240 minutes but keep it to around one minute in duration otherwise people won’t even play as they want to keep scrolling. Use subtitles as most people have their device on mute when they are browsing Facebook.
The opposite is true for a Facebook Live. People need to have a chance to realise you are ‘on’ and the opportunity to share this information with others. So, give it at least ten minutes before your audience is flocking to your content gold.
Fed up of fighting your way through the new Facebook ecosystem? ATTAIN’s dedicated team are here to help. Contact us on info@attain.uk.com to work with you to get the best for your business.
