Facebook updates its algorithm to stop begging fans
Facebook algorithm improvements have been announced with new tweaks to the news feed & posting strategies. To reduce spam links, and bad quality stories and stop brands and people who ask their communities to like, share or comment on their shitty stories – Facebook aims to decrease frustration and increase users’ enjoyability with the site.
Facebook Algorithm
Today we are announcing a series of improvements to Newsfeed to reduce stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don’t want to see. Many of these stories are published by Pages that deliberately try and game News Feed to get more distribution than they normally would. Our update targets three broad categories of this type of feed spam behavior.
Facebook said
Overview – What Will Facebook do?
Facebook is like any company, aiming to satisfy and keep customers happy while using the Facebook site – to achieve the needed satisfaction, they invented the Facebook algorithm, enabling them to monitor and change how people use the site. Over the past year, Facebook has inducted an exercise to collect users’ feedback about the quality of stories on its newsfeed; Moreover, Facebook is regularly collecting data from Facebook users to test their satisfaction.
Results: Facebook users are not happy with what they see on Newsfeed – Reasons why are the following 3 annoying behaviors by content creators (community pages owners & brands representatives):
- Like-baiting
- Frequently Circulated Content
- Spammy Links
What is Like-baiting?
Asking fans to like, comment, or share your stories is like-baiting – Previously called call to action. Nowadays, page owners are taking the easy way out by including a direct call to action into their content such as “Please like, share, comment, and so on).
Many users noticed this begging marking strategy; Facebook explained this as:
People often respond to posts asking them to take an action, and this means that these posts get shown to more people, and get shown higher up in News Feed. However, when we survey people and ask them to rate the quality of these stories, they report that like-baiting stories are, on average, 15% less relevant than other stories with a comparable number of likes, comments, and shares. Over time, these stories lead to a less enjoyable experience on Facebook since they drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.
Facebook Algorithm – Like-baiting
How Will Facebook Algorithm Detect Like-baiting Stories?
Pages that ask fans to like, share or comment will be detected by the new Facebook algorithm and considered like-baiting for MISUSING the site to reach more people. The new update allows Facebook to defect these keywords, and instantly, Facebook will make ensure that they are not shown more prominently in News Feed than more relevant stories from friends and other Pages “Facebook declared.”
Facebook continued to explain, “This update will not impact Pages that are genuinely trying to encourage discussion among their fans and focuses initially on Pages that frequently post explicitly asking for Likes, Comments, and Shares.”
What Should I Do Not To Get Impacted By The New Facebook Algorithm Changes?
Avoid asking fans to like, comment, or share your posts, and try to tweak your work to adapt to the new Facebook algorithm.
What Are The Recommended Strategies to Engage Fans?
It’s all about smartness and understanding your customers; it’s time to change how you communicate with your customers on Facebook, for example:
- Try indirect call-to-action tactics – Ask people questions
- Encourage fans to join the conversation and give their feedback
- communicate more openly & smartly to gain your fans’ like-ability
- impress your fans with high-quality and smart photos and ideas, and they will like and share neutrally
Frequently Circulated Content
Great update?! Yes, Facebook is preventing people from filling the timeline with repeated content. There’re two scenarios:
- Stealing others’ content and re-post it
- Repeating yourself by re-sharing old booming content again and again
Facebook goes on to explain this new update saying, “People and Pages on Facebook frequently reshare great content, but people tell us there are occasionally instances where photos or videos are uploaded to Facebook over and over again. We’ve found that people tend to find these instances of repeated content less relevant and are more likely to complain about the Pages that frequently post them. We are improving Newsfeed to de-emphasize these Pages, and our early testing shows that this change causes people to hide 10% fewer stories from Pages overall.”
Facebook algorithm Frequently Circulated Content
What Does That Mean?
If you’re a page owner on Facebook, you certainly know that there’re people who save photos to their desktop and remove the original branding, then reshare it as if they own it to gain the same or maybe more engagement like/than the original creator.
Facebook will stop those people from stealing content by decreasing their stolen posts’ reach and engagement to the minimum, so they won’t gain anything but a bad reputation and won’t do that again!
Spammy Links
As we mentioned, the Facebook algorithm is monitoring and considers users’ feedback sensitively. The spammy links are stories in News Feed using inaccurate language or formatting to trick people into clicking through to a website containing only ads or a combination of frequently circulated content and ads. For instance, often, these stories claim to link to a photo album but instead take the viewer to a website with just ads.
By measuring how frequently people on Facebook who visit a link choose to like the original post or share that post with their friends, Facebook can better detect spammy links. The update improves News Feed to reduce cases of these spammy links. Facebook reveals that in the early testing they’ve seen a 5% increase in people on Facebook clicking on links that take them off of Facebook – this is a big increase in the context of News Feed and is a good sign that people are finding the remaining content in their News Feed more relevant and trustworthy.
Now you are aware of what’s going on with the Facebook algorithm and the latest improvements; it’s time to take control of your fans’ newsfeeds and engage with them in the right way.
Happy Posting 🙂
