Facebook wants you to post more pictures of kittens

For those who don’t follow the ins and outs of social media content algorithms, Facebook announced yesterday that they’re applying a News Feed algorithm change that will penalize text-only updates from Pages. Brands, companies, personalities, bands, musicians, politicians, and anyone else who uses Facebook Pages will now have their text-only updates seen less in the News Feed.

From the announcement:

“…the latest update to News Feed ranking treats text status updates from Pages as a different category to text status updates from friends. We are learning that posts from Pages behave differently to posts from friends and we are working to improve our ranking algorithms so that we do a better job of differentiating between the two types.”

So what kinds of content should Pages be posting? The guidance Facebook offered says that they’re looking for a more visual, more compelling experience for followers of Facebook Pages.

What’s a brand to do with the ever-increasing levels of punishment being doled out to Facebook Pages? First, comply with Facebook’s guidelines as best as you can. If you look at the SHIFT Communications page (please), we made a strategy change a few months back to make every formerly text-only status update come with a photo. You’ll likely want to do the same. Where do you get that many photos? Get your staff and your team snapping photos with their smartphones and digital cameras as time permits, and use the best photos in your social media status updates. Learn how to use visual storytelling tools, from simple photos to videos to animated GIFs and more. Develop an art library internally – and yes, if you have a cat (particularly a kitten), in all seriousness, you have an ideal source of content for a fair number of status updates.

Second, there is now a greater advantage to have individuals share your Page’s content, so to the extent that you can develop a rabid fan base on Facebook, ask people to share. Consider putting that as a call to action in your updates for updates that they find useful or helpful. Ask everyone friendly to you to share important stories on their personal feeds – customers, vendors, friends, employees – so as to leverage the power of your network. But do so sparingly.

Third, set aside some advertising budget. That’s where Facebook is going, of course, for brands. They want brands to invest in the platform, and every penalty applied in their algorithm recently is only relevant to non-paid content. How much budget should you put aside? As much as you can spare. Aim to promote at least one status update of any kind per week, if not per day. (We’ll have more details soon on paid vs. non-paid reach.)

Facebook’s strategy is clear: they want brands to pay to be seen, and to end the free ride that we’ve all gotten thus far. Do your level best to keep up with the changes they recommend, and be prepared to pay.

Christopher S. Penn
Vice President, Marketing Technology

[cta]