The Big 2018 Facebook Algorithm Change

Businesses all over the world find themselves in a quandary with Facebook’s recent algorithm change that impacts the way content is delivered to the target audience. However at Reverse Thought, being the 360 degree marketing agency that we are, we knew how to take on this change resulting in zero negative impact to our clients’ reach and engagement on this platform.
Facebook is the reigning queen of the world’s Social Media Platforms and any business that relies on Facebook for marketing has a lot at stake with its algorithm changes. And these changes in the algorithm can make or break your Facebook marketing strategy, impacting how you reach millions of users who are a part of your target audience.
Facebook’s Algorithm
Like every piece of software, Facebook also runs on a unique set of rules or protocols, which are better known as Facebook’s algorithms. These algorithms run seamlessly in the backend helping users find friends, show similar content, prioritize family-oriented posts, and provide more visibility to content they have previously liked. While Facebook has a number of algorithms running, the most important is the ‘News Feed Algorithm’ that decides who gets to see a particular post in their news feed.
How businesses use Facebook
As you may already know, businesses primarily use Facebook to connect with their customers, spread upcoming news, promote their product, and engage customers into buying their products. And, all of this is done with the help of public posts. Now, the success of these posts depends mainly on how many people the post reaches, and once reached, how many people are engaged into buying the product or service. And this is exactly where Facebook’s algorithm comes into place. Facebook’s algorithm controls- who gets to see these public posts, and how many people’s news feed the post gets into.
What changes to expect
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that posts from friends and family are more likely to populate your news feed rather than ones from businesses and brands. This implies that posts from businesses will receive a lower ranking as compared to posts from family and friends. So, the next public post made via your brand or business will not reach as many users, its reach will drop, and that will not be because of your content, but because of Facebook’s algorithm changes. Now even though these algorithm changes are said to drown out brand posts, Facebook Ads are ever so willing to step in and save the day. So, your brand content will receive the deserved reach if you invest in Facebook Ads. While the CEO of Facebook never mentions advertisements in any of his announcements, Facebook receives a majority of its funding from advertisements and this algorithm change is about improving Facebook’s advertising revenues.
So bottom-line is, Facebook will continue to tweak its algorithms, and while Facebook continues to reign over the rest, you’ll have to yield to its wishes. User experience is the no. 1 priority of Facebook like it has been for years. And that’s where the secret to success is. Brands will need to be even more engaging and content driven in the future to ensure that every second of viewership fulfils one of your many objectives and people keep coming back for more.
And, don’t forget that even though Facebook has a humungous user base, other social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, AdWords, and SEO are rushing past Facebook in terms of popularity. Hence Facebook is not the end of the world.