Facebook News Feed Changes (and What it Means for Pages)

Facebook just changed things up again, but this time it’s really good news for Page owners.

Yesterday, Facebook announced a slight tweak to the News Feed algorithm. Starting today you will begin to see more “text-only” posts from friends in your News Feed. You will also see less text-only posts from Pages in your News Feed (because Facebook noticed text-only posts from Pages were not getting much engagement).

Why is This a Good Thing?

Here’s the good news. Facebook also announced that they will start to push more “link-share” posts from Pages out into the News Feed of our fans.

What’s a “link-share” post? Oh, I was hoping you’d ask!

Most of us embed our links directly into our status updates, but that’s no longer effective. I suggest you DO NOT post like:

Instead, create a LINK-SHARE post that looks like this:

Notice how there is an image in the post as well as the title and description text below the image? That’s a “link-share” post. (This type of post is not new – what’s new is that Facebook tweaked it’s algorithm and is now giving more weight to link-share posts vs. text only posts.)

How to Create a Link-Share Post

When you add a link to a status update, the image with the title and description should automatically get pulled into the post, thus creating a “link-share” post. You can then delete the link in the status update box because the image and the description are now clickable.

Simple as that!

Here’s what Facebook had to say about this recent change:

“The best way to share a link after this update will be to use a link-share. We’ve found that, as compared to sharing links by embedding in status updates, these posts get more engagement (more likes, comments, shares and clicks) and they provide a more visual and compelling experience for people seeing them in their feeds.”

This is good news for Page owners because images take up more room in the News Feed and therefore are more eye-catching and interesting than a boring text post. So I see only good things coming from this new change.

One More Tip!

You can continue to also create status updates where you actually upload the image yourself. When you do that, I suggest you upload an image that is 1200 x 1200 pixels (that’s big, I know!) and Facebook will resize it for you so that your post will show up correctly (nothing will get cut off) on your timeline, in the desktop News Feed and on mobile News Feeds as well.

I Know It Can Be Frustrating

As a marketer, I am sure you know that Facebook is extremely valuable to your business. However, I know it’s frustrating when you hear that organic reach has declined and each time you post on your Page, only a fraction of your fans see your post in their News Feed. (It makes me mad too!)

But I also know there are ways to increase your organic reach and there is no denying that Facebook is a powerful tool for relationship building and list building.

I see it as my job to help you make Facebook work for you. I have more timely tips and tricks to increase your engagement and turn your Facebook posts into real profits – so look for more valuable strategies coming your way soon.

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