In 2018, Facebook’s algorithm took a dramatic change. Yet marketers are having a hard time keeping up with the company’s revised calculations in 2020. Today, we are going to solve issues for social media marketers finally.
In January 2018, Facebook decided to trigger the social media publishing and advertising community by introducing major changes in its algorithm. The drastic change became the reason for marketers’ nightmares who had little clue of how the change will affect their posts ranking on the social media platform.
So before we get into how marketers can modify their social media marketing strategies to avoid the mistakes made in the past, let us address the crucial aspects of this write-up first.
Explaining the Facebook algorithm
The Facebook algorithm is the set of calculations that the company now uses to decide what content users will see. The significant changes Facebook made in its algorithm mainly based on how posts are prioritized and ordered in users’ Newsfeed.
To help users understand why Facebook made these changes CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that users will see more posts from friends, family, and groups their news feed and fewer posts from businesses, brands, and media.
While the user’s newsfeed became more private and personal, the notable decline in the organic reach and engagement rate on business posts caused major nuisance amongst the marketing community.
By publishing fewer business posts and favoring posts from users, Facebook pushed organic traffic on business posts to a near dead end. One of the dramatic cases reported soon after the company announced major changes in its algorithm was the engagement rate on posts of a smaller agency. The agency reported that users’ engagement in its pots dropped from 14,000 to just 500.
A 2018 study by Buffer and Buzzsumo showed similar statistics depicting the misery of marketers after Facebook’s decision to limit business and brand posts on users’ newsfeed.
The study conducted by Buffer and Buzzsumo studied more than 43 million posts from the top 20,000 brands on the mega social media websites. The study concluded that all the analyzed Facebook pages suffered more than 50% engagement reduction.
As of 2020, Facebook has decided to stick to its plan of providing a better user experience rather than being a supportive channel to global marketers and online business owners. The company says that its focus on helping users understand the changed algorithm and receive better feedback.
While the organic reach continued to drop from 2018 until the present year, the prices of paid reach on Facebook increased. This again created a not-so-beneficial environment for entrepreneurs and marketers to market their brand on a social media platform. However, to achieve success there are always some other ways.
Tips to Work with Facebook Algorithm
Have you finished shedding sweat and tears to earn the lost organic traffic your Facebook posts before the 2018 debacle? Here is how to win it back this year.
Nevertheless, having a high-speed business internet from Windstream Communications remains the first smart tip forever.
Start Conversations That Links People
One of the key ranking signals from the Facebook algorithm is to see whether a user has previously engaged with your page or not.
People will not have the same kind of behavior on your brand page as they would have on a friend’s timeline. Therefore, you have to come a long way to receive organic traffic on your posts before the algorithm starts recognizing you.
Therefore, the best way to earn genuine engagement on a brand page is to humanize the brand. Try coming up with posts that are funny, interesting, inspiring curious to have user engagement on your page.
Have a Better Understanding of Your Audience
By understanding the audience, most marketers think of fetching personal details of their potential customers. While, in reality knowing your audience means knowing when your audience is online and active.
Recency being another ranking signal of the Facebook algorithm is the pattern that decides which posts are visible to your users.
According to Hootsuite’s data on when brands should post:
- B2B brand posts perform great on Facebook between 9 am and 2 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
- B2C brand posts perform best on Facebook at noon on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday
Step up Your Game with High-quality Videos
Last year, Facebook announced it will surface quality, original videos on its Newsfeed. Therefore, the algorithm is continuing to give the edge to video content in 2020 as well.
Following crucial factors in your video will determine whether it is worth surfacing or Facebook algorithm:
- Videos based on Loyalty and intent: Videos that users search for and return to.
- Video-based on high quality and longer duration: videos that users prefer watching for more than a minute and are longer than 3 minutes.
- Videos based on Originality: Videos that are not repurposed from other sources and plenty of benefit.
Key Takeaways
While there is a lot to learn from the major changes in the Facebook algorithm, the key tips and takeaways are to post genuine, real and user-friendly content to earn genuine traffic. In addition, building consistency in the publishing of your posts is what pleases Facebook algorithms the most.