5 Reasons to Focus on Percentages, Not Likes for Conquering the New Facebook Algorithm

by Junaid Ali Qureshi, Guest Contributor

If you are a digital marketer who has been managing multiple Facebook brand and fan pages, you must have experienced the shudder that was felt by all advertising companies when Facebook announced its new, altered News Feed algorithm a couple of months ago.

Apparently, having top-notch creative working on a Facebook page, creating organic content, and posting regularly are not enough. All of this will get you likes and follows but that, in turn, will not help you conquer the new algorithm.
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Current Facebook marketing strategy should be focused on creating content to engage audience and interaction.

With the primary objective of uncluttering Facebook and reverting back to Facebook’s initial motto of facilitating people-to-people interactions, Mark Zuckerberg announced on January 11th, 2018 that Facebook will be prioritizing content shared by friends and family over content produced and shared by brand pages. For brands, this update to the algorithm means that their content will be occupying fewer and fewer space on the News Feeds of Facebook users.

In the words of Facebook's Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri, “Facebook will begin to shift ranking to make News Feed more about connecting with people and less about consuming media in isolation."

This may be great sounding news to Facebook users as they will now be able to scroll through kitty photos uploaded by their crazy cat lady neighbor or the updates on the bridal shower of their best friend; this is truly unfortunate for marketers. They will have to completely reboot their Facebook marketing strategy in order to still be visible on their consumers’ News Feeds.

The new Facebook marketing strategy that marketers should be designing should not be focused around gaining more likes. Rather, the emphasis should be on creating content that engages audience and contributes to their interaction with other people.

Facebook pages no longer stand a higher chance of visibility on News Feeds if they have greater likes. However, if they produce content that their audience feels compelled to share, then the page is bound to be more visible in News Feeds.

Here are some reasons why you should not be focusing on likes if you wish to conquer the new algorithm:

1. Part of the algorithm deals with machine-learning. Instead of assigning generic point values to post formats as it used to do in the past, the machine-learning algorithm assesses and adapts to individual user preferences. For example, if an individual never, or very rarely, interacts with photos, Facebook will show him/her fewer and fewer photos in the News Feed, regardless of the popularity of photo posts of the pages liked by the individual.
2. Facebook has found a way to prioritize quantity over quality. It has identified the type of content format that drives most engagement and sharing for marketers: native and live videos. Facebook Native and Live Videos rank higher in people’s News Feeds as well as videos with greater completion rates and that are clicked on and unmuted frequently. All of these kinds of videos get more News Feed space than videos that have a greater number of ‘likes’.
3. There are factors and indicators that highlight to the Facebook algorithm whenever and wherever a meaningful interaction takes place. For example, trigger words like ‘Congratulations’ that point towards an important event in a post get highlighted and noticed by the Facebook algorithm.
4. Facebook rewards content that shows some level of personal interaction with the users or content that helps produce further person-to-person interactions.
5. With the new algorithm, organic reach of fan or brand pages with little to no user engagement is bound to go down. Posts with longer, more engaging comment threads will get more screen space.  

If one truly thinks about it, this algorithm update is representative of where digital marketing is headed from now on: towards creating useful user experience through meaningful interactions. Facebook is indeed a trend setter and pioneer in the aforementioned. It would not be long before Instagram and other social media channels follow suit and devalue likes and follows over people-to-people interactions.

Therefore, this is a time when it is important for everyone on the team, including the web design company, marketer, content creator, and entrepreneur, to get together and learn from this update in algorithm.
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Author bio:

Junaid Ali Qureshi is a digital marketing specialist who has helped several businesses gain traffic, outperform competition and generate profitable leads. His current ventures include :
​Progostech, Magentodevelopers.online.eLabelz, Smart Leads.ae, Progos Tech and eCig.