Last week, Facebook announced changes to its news feed algorithms that puts content from friends and family ahead of other publishers. The company says that changes made to the rankings are in response to users’ concerns about missing important updates from those they care about, but admits that the change may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some pages.
On Facebook’s corporate blog, Engineering Director Lars Backstrom says, “The specific impact on your page’s distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience. For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through page posts. We encourage pages to post things that their audience members are likely to share with their friends.”
Marketers’ responses on the changes have been mixed. Some have welcomed the push toward quality over quantity in the sector and the renewed emphasis on relatability in their work, while others note that the change will spur investment in paid advertising on Facebook to maintain the reach and traffic they previously enjoyed.
Click here for a range of responses from marketing industry experts on the algorithm change’s impact on brands.