Facebook will be updating their algorithm to prioritise posts from friends and family over public content. This means that we will start seeing fewer news articles, and less advertising content and more of vacation videos from our friends, photos of their food, and more family-friendly posts from people we know.

What it means to publishers and what can they do?

This is a huge change for Facebook because they are shifting back to being social networking site connecting friends and family from one of the world’s biggest distributors of news and online ads.
For publishers, potential customer scrolling through sponsored content was a blessing. Publishers began to rely on Facebook for increased traffic, which worked when public content was customisable and to an extent predicable on the News Feed.
To take advantage in shifting change, the publishers should focus on creating good and engaging content. Say goodbye to one image click banner ad, to more creative high quality content which will appeal to active audience.

Firstly, publishers should encourage their audience to follow them and make sure they always see posts from them by choosing “See First” in their news feed preferences, that option is not changing.

Publishers should increase using Facebook live which is not affected by the change. Video gives a chance to interact with audience directly and get tones of engagement.

The other example of high quality content is creating gifs & short video, which will serve you well under the new Facebook feed.

Businesses should look into new ways to engage customers with Groups, alongside their Page and advertising efforts. Instead of selling your service spend time with engaging with them with different tops, hosting Q & A, simple how to guide etc.

Finally, invest time in Facebook ads. The organic reach is declining and with change in newsfeed it would be impossible to get more followers. Just increasing the budget on Facebook ads is not the answer. Invest some time in targeting the right audience and taking advantage of using different ad types. Find out which ones match with your desired campaign goals!

The key is to embrace the change and find ways to make them work the best for you.