WHAT DID I MISS?

At the f8 Facebook Developer Conference this week, VP, Product News feed, Adam Mosseri spoke about how Facebook determines what content users see in their newsfeeds from their friends and publishers (“News Feed: Getting Your Content to the Right People”). While most of it was old news (punch line: people see more of the content they interact with), Mosseri reiterated Facebook’s focus on showing people content they are “interested” in.

Facebook assigns each piece of content created and posted by friends or publishers a relevancy score for each user, and how likely the user sees a piece of content is based on that unique relevancy score algorithm. The relevancy score is determined by factors including who posted the content (does the user often interact with content from that publisher?), content type (does the follower interact with similar content e.g. photos?), if the content getting a lot of interactions, and timeliness. Facebook also has further measures in place to determine how “interesting” a piece of content is not based interactions, including a Feed Quality Program where Facebook compares their rankings based on the Relevancy Score to people organically ranking stories through panels and surveys.

WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS?

Facebook wants more people to use Facebook, more actively, more often. In the age of digital sharing, people are constantly inundated with content online and on social media – not all of which may be of interest to them. If people see content they are interested in on their newsfeed, they are more likely to come back to Facebook, spend more time on Facebook, and stay active on Facebook by liking, commenting, and sharing. Continuing to grow an engaged user base means continuing ad revenue growth for Facebook.

TAKEAWAYS

Mosseri offered several recommendations for publishers who are looking to make sure interested users continue to see their posts in the crowded Facebook newsfeed. His recommendations include:

- “Write compelling headlines”

- “Avoid overly promotional content”

- “Try things” - basically test different content to see resonates with your audience

OUR $0.02

Surprisingly, he did not mention putting paid promotion behind organic posts.

While testing different content types and providing valuable content for your audience are certainly important strategies for optimizing your organic content, as organic reach on Facebook for brands continues to decline, no amount of creative headlines or testing video lengths will make up for that lost reach. Facebook has really become a “pay to play” space requiring brands to put money behind their content to reach larger audiences, or even people who follow their brand page. Facebook is still a valuable social network with the potential for huge reach, but brands may be better off putting less money and resources into creating more Facebook content, and focus instead on creating and optimizing less content with more paid promotion (no surprise there).

Daisy Lee is a Social Strategist, DigitasLBi Boston

Read more work from Daisy: Meet Moments, Twitter’s New Immersive Story Platform