January 12, 2015
If you’ve ever liked a brand or organization on Facebook, you may have noticed recurrent posts from their Page encouraging promotions or purchases. After receiving negative feedback from users about this particular practice, Facebook has stated that they will be decreasing overly-promotional posts in users’ News Feeds starting this month. This will drastically change social media marketing strategies since promotional posts often serve as free advertising opportunities for businesses.
What’s considered “overly promotional”?
Facebook has stated that there are several factors that determine whether a Page post will be allowed to show in the News Feed. “Overly-promotional” content is defined in the following ways:
- Posts that push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes without real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
Example of an overly promotional post:
So how should brands respond to this change?
Although this new algorithm is a response to negative criticism of promotional posts, Facebook will likely benefit from this change since it will push businesses to buy paid advertising in order to achieve sales and downloads. For brand awareness and engagement, however, they still stress the importance of having an existing business Page to reach consumers, and even mentioned plans to add extra features and customization options in the future.
In the meantime, they encourage businesses to “think about their Page as a cornerstone of their online identity, not simply as a publishing service. The businesses that are doing this well understand the discovery and communication that happens when people come to the Page.”
Do you think this change is a way to enhance the user experience on Facebook, or simply a way to get businesses to buy Facebook advertising? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below, email us at [email protected], or tweet us @Perfect_Search!