Facebook is to filter out excessive promotional content in newsfeeds.
Alistair from Healthy Websites in Hamilton (Glasgow), asked me to pass comment on the imminent changes.
Facebook has decided to severely cut back on and penalise users who intentionally ‘like-bait’ – when a business encourages other users to like and share a post to ensure that it stays visible in the newsfeeds of others and will demote their posts entirely out of sight. Other blatant promotional and sales posts by businesses that are an attempt to sell a product or get users to install an app which are deemed to have no real context or reuse the same conduct from their online advertisements will also be quashed in the same manner.
The official statement from Facebook states: “What it means for businesses”
“As an avid user of Facebook this is great news. What delights me is to be successful companies will have to be creative, tell stories through micro-content, images and Vines / film, without pushing their product or offer on every post. Can you tell me the ROI of scheduling a blatant offer? It’s about the same as a mass email; how’s that working for you?
Personally do you follow or subscribe to Digg, Huffington Post, The Poke… on Facebook? Businesses can learn a lot from these entertainment feeds. They need to entertain the audience (and I don’t mean schedule links to other peoples content) they need to contextually win them over. Raise brand awareness by being personal, clever, emotive and creative . Making sure to integrate their advertising, marketing and content plans. Do you think RedBull paid for Baumgartner to freefall for kicks? It’s why Agencies like mine exist.”