Facebook Showing Fewer Text Posts From Business Pages

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In an announcement yesterday Facebook revealed that it will begin showing fewer text posts from business and fan pages, while it will begin showing more of the same types of posts from friends. Facebook attributes this change to their efforts to show more of the type of content users want to see.

“We are learning that posts from Pages behave differently to posts from friends and we are working to improve our ranking algorithms so that we do a better job of differentiating between the two types. This will help us show people more content they want to see. Page admins can expect a decrease in the distribution of their text status updates, but they may see some increases in engagement and distribution for other story types.”

Here’s how the change works. When many pages share a link to an article they embed the link in their status update, like this:

With this update Facebook says the best way to share a link is to use the link-share function, as their testing shows this type of story generates more user engagement. Here’s what a link-share update looks like:

This may be an unwelcome change for page admins using a third party app for posting, as some apps do not activate the link-share function automatically. I also see this as an incentive from Facebook for businesses to use the native app. If you manage a Facebook page, keep in mind that these link-share posts will be the best type for engagement and distribution.

What do you think of the change?

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/KHvAiP