As usual, more changes happening on Facebook. These are actually good ones.
Here is what the great Mari Smith said about these changes:
Two more changes to Facebook’s News Feed just announced! Again, the emphasis is on quality content, relevance and giving priority to related conversations. “Helping You Find More News To Talk About” http://newsroom.fb.com/News/768/News-Feed-FYI-Helping-You-Find-More-News-to-Talk-About
Here are the two updates with suggested takeaways:
① Facebook continues to put emphasis on quality content. Now, links to quality articles on external sites will be given priority in the News Feed, especially on mobile. “Meme photos” (hosted outside of Facebook) will be given lower priority in the News Feed.
Facebook’s surveys reveal that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports teams, or shared interests to the latest meme.
In addition, soon after you click on an article in the News Feed to read it, you may see up to three related articles directly below to help you discover more interesting content. Cool!
➤ TAKEAWAY: As we get ready to go into a new year, focus on producing, curating and sharing excellent content that is relevant to your audience. Of course, this has always been the case, but with these new changes, we may start to see (finally!) LINK posts getting better “EdgeRank” (News Feed visibility). Perhaps at some point, link post reach will eventually be on par with status updates and photo posts?! That would be awesome.
② Earlier this year, Facebook announced a new way to push stories you may not have seen in the News Feed yet back up to the top. This tweak to the algorithm is called “Story Bump.” Now, Facebook is adding bumping to also highlight stories with new comments. When you make a comment on a post, often you might not return to that conversation. This new bumping update allows you to resurface stories with new comments to see what else has been said and add to the thread, if you wish.
➤ TAKEAWAY: Make good use of Friend Lists (including the Close Friends List) and Interest Lists to keep a closer eye on key contacts, friends and Pages so you can proactively engage with relevant posts. As you engage with posts, this helps to bump that story higher in the News Feed of the people involved in the conversation. (To learn how to set up Lists, see this post: http://bit.ly/fb_newsfeed).
Remember, “Content is King but Engagement is Queen and she rules the house!” These two updates to Facebook’s News Feed are great examples of that quote.