Facebook Algorithm Updates? Time To Rethink Your Social Strategies

Earlier this week, Facebook announced changes to the algorithm that drives News Feed. They’re making changes that will stop favoring click-bait headlines that users might only stay on for a few seconds and will instead give better treatment to stories that users spend more time on an actively share to their friends. If you’re managing your company’s Facebook (or paying someone else to) you should read more about the changes. There’s another message buried in Facebook’s announcement, however: your Facebook strategy isn’t something you can do once and then forget about.

That’s one of the most frustrating things about coming up with a Facebook strategy – how do you actually manage your posting? For a lot of people, their first instinct is to use their company’s Facebook page the same way they’d use their personal profile and post things the second the idea springs to their head, with no real idea for what comes next. Of course, there’s no other part of your business you’d run that way.

The other end of the spectrum is setting up your Facebook posts one month at a time and scheduling them to be posted through any of a variety of services that can handle that. The problem with doing it this way, of course, is that Facebook is basically in a perpetual state of beta. Like so many social sites, the rules can change any minute, and if you’ve got a calendar that starts on a Sunday and Facebook updates the algorithm on a Monday, that’s a full month where you’re not getting the most out of your strategy.

What’s the answer here? No matter what your strategy is for Facebook the website, you need to have someone paying attention to Facebook the company. If you’re handling your social accounts in-house, someone on your team needs to subscribe to Facebook’s blog. If you’ve hired a marketing firm to handle social for you, this should be a semi-constant topic of conversation. (And yes, they might be a little annoyed that you keep asking about any updates to algorithms. That’s because algorithm changes are hard and annoying to stay on top of, but that’s what you’re paying them for.)

Now in 2014, most companies have come around to the idea that social media in general and Facebook specifically will play some part in their marketing strategy. For most companies (especially smaller ones), their efforts to “be on Facebook” don’t take advantage of the best practices of “being on Facebook” and other social sites.

To play this game correctly, you have to stay on top of it. It’s not a food dehydrator you can “set and forget.” Whatever your company needs to do to make sure you’re up to date on the technology that drives these sites – that’s what you need to do. It’s complicated, but it’s just that simple.

Facebook Algorithm Updates? Time To Rethink Your Social Strategies