News Feed Changes at Facebook and Its Impact on Your Web Marketing

News Feed Changes at Facebook and Its Impact on Your Web Marketing

On Facebook, your marketing needs to make real friends.

Facebook is changing its news feed to reduce promotional content, based on survey responses from users. Specifically, Facebook will limit overly promotional pages. If you’ve been using Facebook pages as an advertising platform, it’s time to change the way to do it. On Facebook, everything you do should be about building relationships with customers that feel like friendship.

Promotional Page Problems

Facebook controls the number of ads people see, but didn’t look carefully at pages from commercial Facebook accounts before. When a Facebook page is essentially and advertisement, it undermines ad limits designed to improve user experience. Facebook is now limiting promotional posts, which it identifies as having the following traits:

• Only contains information designed to sell a product or app
• Only contains a sweepstakes promotion
• Reuses verbatim content of ads

Some may see this as a way for Facebook to push businesses into paying for advertising services. While that might be a valid argument, user experience should still come first and ads don’t support that. People want to see useful, fun and engaging content on their Facebook pages – not promotions. If you want their eyes on your pages, you’ll have to do more.

Marketing on Facebook Is about Relationships

Remember that Facebook isn’t your blog. It’s a place where things are a bit less formal and a tad more fun. It’s a place to post information that gives visitors a glimpse inside your business. Share content related to your business that makes you laugh. Communicate important customer information. Answer questions from clients. Most importantly, interact and engage. It’s important to maintain a constant presence on Facebook to create two-way channels of communication that strengthen customer relationships. Here, posts should feel like a friend-to-friend message, not a business sales pitch.

If you aren’t already doing so, you should change your Facebook strategy so it becomes a place for people to learn more about your business and connect on a deeper level. There’s a reason they call it “friending” on Facebook. Stop chasing likes and start chasing friends if you want to see strong results.

Facebook is like other web marketing avenues in that it must be useful or amusing in some way to be successful. Engagement drives success these days, not keywords. Facebook is different in that it gives you an opportunity to let your hair down and really connect with people as humans. No other web-marketing platform does it so well – so long as you do it right.

Efelle Creative Can Help You Redesign Your Facebook Marketing

The experts at efelle creative have experience translating your business’s strengths to successful campaigns that achieve results. Let us help you transform your Facebook pages into marketing communications that build relationships with customers. Call us at 206.384.4909 or use our online contact form to set up a free consultation.