Those tweaks in Facebook News Feed are probably just as newsworthy as those dreaded changes in Google’s Search engine algorithms (the bane of numerous online publishers), if your business or website depends largely on social media for user traffic. Well, Facebook has just posted a heads-up about certain updates to News Feed that will ensure people get to see high quality content.
So how does a social network determine what counts as good quality posts and what doesn’t? User engagement, of course. If people tend to frequently hide content posted through your Page, it may automatically be reported as low quality. While Google apparently does not take into the account the number of comments, shares and likes on a post in search ranking, Facebook appears to include these factors as well.
Here’s what you should watch out for
1. If you’re promoting your web portal or business through Facebook, it would probably be best not to ask people to like or share your Page in exchange for things like coupons, online freebies or other small ‘kickbacks.’ Such posts are not likely to be considered as content carrying any real interest. Plus, Zuckerberg doesn’t want you giving Promoted Posts any competition.
2. One of the survey questions asked by the social network in order to gauge what made users think of posts as high quality ones was whether the provided example could be called a meme or low quality content. So meme propagators should probably watch out and hopefully, News Feed won’t give your Page a low rank just because you have too many memes on it.
3. The content you publish on Facebook should also be relevant and timely. We’re guessing that means if you’re a tech blog which posts old news or stories that are absolutely not related to technology, people who’ve liked your Page may display the tendency to hide your updates anyway.
4. The trustworthiness of a source, the incidences of people complaining about a Page’s posts appearing in their News Feed, the completeness of a Page’s profile and more are also added to the whole mix.
Have you been seeing a change in the kind of content that pops up in your News Feed of late? Do tell us about it in the comments section below.