How To Make The Most Of The New Facebook Algorithm

In recent years, Facebook’s newsfeed has gone from mainly displaying activity from your friends and family, to becoming increasingly populated by media, businesses and organisations.

There have been pros and cons to this; while it’s helped smaller brands build an audience and a community using engaging content, others have used Facebook’s algorithm to inundate people with largely irrelevant marketing messages.

Facebook is now looking to put the ‘social’ back into social network with an updated algorithm that favours meaningful conversations and content from friends and family.

In Mark Zuckerberg’s own words: “I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”

So what does this mean for brands that are still looking to engage with their audiences through Facebook?

1. Your content has to be engaging.
Content that generates engagement through likes, shares and - in particular - conversations will be favoured by the new algorithm as Facebook works to put an end to passive scrolling through the newsfeed.

2. You may have to re-think your video strategy.
Videos have long benefited from the Facebook algorithm, but this advantage is set to decline unless they generate meaningful interaction. You can help drive engagement by ensuring your video captures people’s attention in the first three seconds, or by including a call to action. Live video is predicted to stay strong, with videos that are watched for longer gaining more visibility in the newsfeed.

3. Your Facebook page will require an advertising budget.
This update will all but eliminate organic reach, which is the amount of people who see your posts without you paying for it. This means brands will have to pay to reach their audience, no matter how relevant their content is.

Engagement also affects sponsored posts, with posts generating conversation achieving higher reach. To maximise the potential of your sponsored posts, always respond to comments from followers to keep the conversation going.

4. Influencers will become even more influential.
As influencers are perceived as people first and brands second, they tend to have a very personal relationship with their audience. They know their followers well and often generate a ton of interaction on their posts, making them one of the few commercial winners of the new algorithm and an important asset for brands looking for visibility online.

For support on improving your engagement on Facebook and working with the new algorithm, get in touch with the team on 01202 293095 or hello@sunnybirdpr.com

Organic reach on social media is going down, but can you beat the algorithms?

A few years back, those of us promoting via social media would have measured success by the amount of likes and followers generated. This was true across the board from Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.

However as the social network giants changed their algorithms to prioritise the most relevant content for its users, a lot of likes are no longer a guarantee for reaching your fans. Now, your posts will only reach a small percentage of your followers through what we call “organic reach” (the amount of people who see a post without you paying for it). It’s the social networks’ way of encouraging businesses to pay for promotions, ensuring the ‘social’ aspect doesn’t drown in a sea of brand promotions.

These changes have made it increasingly difficult for businesses to reach their consumers without breaking the bank on sponsored posts, no matter how amazing the product is. To help you along, we have compiled some tips on how to maximise your social media strategy:

Twitter’s organic reach is 3.61%, meaning if you have 500 followers, your posts will reach 18. You can improve these numbers by commenting on current news and trending hashtags. If you post about today’s big news from the perspective of your business, you become visible to the thousands of Twitter users following current events. You can also collaborate with people and organisations around you, when you tag them in your posts and vice versa, you will reach new followers - a win-win situation!

Facebook has the lowest reach, with an average 2.6% of users reached per post. To get your posts into more newsfeeds, you should feature more video content as they are favoured by Facebook’s algorithm. Make your content shareable; whether it’s by including cute cats, cool facts or amazing achievements, you want people to share your post with their friends and family.

Last week saw the rollout of the “Explore Feed”, this new feature can be found in the menu with your groups, pages and events - look out for a tiny spaceship in a red circle! This new feed is designed to show you posts that Facebook thinks you will find interesting from pages you may not be following yet.

In a few countries (not the UK), an alternative version of this feed is being trialled where the original news feed is reserved for posts from friends, family and advertisers and the pages you follow are pushed into the Explore feed. Countries in the trial are reporting a loss of around 60% in both organic reach and number of interactions (likes, comments and shares). Facebook says there are currently no plans on taking this feature globally, but with it already being tested in six countries, we will be keeping an eye out for it as a UK rollout could mean big changes for us and our clients.

Instagram used to be the king of organic reach at around 20% thanks to its chronological news feed, but since introducing a new algorithm to show users the posts they would “care about the most”, this number has gone down.

Instagram does still favour more recent posts however, so it’s important to know when your followers are online and post at those times. Another way of increasing your Instagram presence is by using hashtags, but make sure they are specific and relevant to reach the people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say (stay clear of #LikeForLike and #FollowForFollow!). A good idea is to look at which hashtags are frequently used by your friends and competitors and use these. A word of caution though; if you use the same hashtags too often this can lead to what is known as a “shadowban”, where Instagram flags your posts as spam and blocks you from showing up in some searches without informing you. Hence it’s always best to keep your content varied and original.

If you have done all of the above and still wish to take your social media presence that little bit further, paying for sponsored posts doesn’t have to cost a fortune if you know who you want to target. If you’re not sure how, we’re here to help. Call us on 01202 293095 to find out more!

Instagram’s New Feature: Instagram Slideshows

As with any new tool on any social media platform, if you find the most effective way to use it, it can earn you 100’s of likes, additional followers and even help you achieve influencer status. Instagram’s latest feature is a brilliantly creative one and we couldn’t wait to get involved and start posting.

As we were doing our mid-morning scroll through Instagram today, we came across the news of Instagram’s latest feature. We’ve been dying to share lots of photos to explain more about the creative concepts behind our PR campaigns without bombarding our Instagram page and followers with too much information. Thanks to Instagram’s new Slideshow feature we are able to share more visual detail when it comes to our Instagram posts.

Without creating a collage or cluster of images on another app, it can be hard to tell the full story of your product, service, experience or a piece of coverage with just one photo. But the day has come for users to now post a collection of up to ten images in one single post. The slideshow posts have a line-up of small blue dots at the bottom of each post to show followers how many images you have in your slideshow and to show them to swipe to the left to see more.

Whilst this brand new feature will require more time to create your everyday post, we have fallen in love with the brand new feature.

How to use Instagram Slideshows:

1.       Gather a collection of images to tell a complete visual story on your phone.

2.       In Instagram, click on the ‘Add Post’ icon in the bottom centre of the app.

3.       In the ‘Add Image’ screen that follows, you will see ‘Select Multiple’ highlighted in grey. Click it.

4.       Select up to 10 files you want to include. Simply tap on the images in the order you want them to appear in and Instagram puts a small blue dot in the upper left-hand corner of each image thumbnail showing you the numerical order your images will appear in the slideshow.

5.       Click ‘Next’ at the top right of the app.

6.       You can apply filters just like a regular image post and then write your caption just as you normally would.

7.       Tag featured businesses/vendors/brands that appear in the images.

8.       Post and celebrate your slideshow!

We’ve created our first slideshow which can be found on our Instagram feed here and we think it’s a great way to get your message, experience or brand concept in front of your followers in a fun and original way. Head over to our feed to check it out.