There’s been a lot of uproar about the new changes that Facebook have made to their newsfeed, but those changes really don’t matter, so what is the fuss all about?
Once Facebook use to prioritise relevant content for users in the newsfeed and now they’re prioritising content that will generate real conversations between real people. In other words, Facebook are going back to their brand values, which were always about connecting people.
The fact is, brands should have been doing this anyway. Social media has never been a good brand to person communication tool. People, in the main, aren’t interested in following brands or talking to nameless brands.
Rather, social media is a great person to person communication tool.
For example, people don’t really want to interact with McDonald’s, the brand, but if McDonald’s had a celebrity chef who showed people how to make burgers and salads the McDonald’s way, people would interact with the chef representing McDonald’s.
So it’s a people to people platform and that’s what news feed is going to encourage.
Secondly, social media is a two way platform. It’s not about broadcasting but eliciting reaction. In order to do that, you have to give people value and you have to move them emotionally, so again, these are things that brands should have always been doing, not suddenly do, just because of the changes.
There are those who say that newsfeed changes are going to result in people having to pay more to get seen, but to be honest, Facebook has been a pay to play platform for a long time now – I don’t think that really changes the game, but the real thing is this; the Facebook changes result in brands having to do what they should always have done on social and if they stick to those values, their social media will work.
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