January 2017 Promotion Magazine March/April issue | Page 6

MEDIA
Recent Facebook Changes:
What’s True &
What’s False
by Edie Melson
O
n January 11 Mark Zuckerberg rocked the social
media world with the announced Facebook
changes. Along with his announcement—and
subsequent Facebook follow-ups—the chaos and
confusion have begun.
Instead of panicking, we must be wise and measured
in our response to what’s happening.
The Truth About the Algorithm Changes
Facebook is returning to the heart of what it was created
to be. Originally FB began as a social place to connect
with friends. Over the years, while FB has remained
social, the area of people-to-brand interaction has grown
exponentially. This has led to a lot of user complaints as
the platform became crowded with advertising.
To alleviate this, FB has instituted a number of
measures. They began with the Edge Rank Algorithm
as they tried to anticipate what users wanted most to see
in their newsfeeds, and now have moved to this latest
update.
First: During Zuckerberg’s announcement he
emphasized the importance of people-to-people
interactions. This is in contrast to people-to-brand (brand
primarily means professional pages) interaction. So
we’re going to see a reduction in posts from pages in our
newsfeed.
Second: Facebook is also limiting the visibility of
posts that link to anything off-site. So an update with
a link to a blog post will get less visibility than other
updates without off-site links.
NOTE: The stated purpose behind these changes is
to encourage more active participation on Facebook.
Anything that’s seen as passive will see less visibility.
Third: FB isn’t limiting all brand-to-people interac-
tions. Any brand (page) that shares updates that lead to
conversation and interaction will retain visibility.
Fourth: This limiting of people-to-brand interaction
will be seen across all FB areas. This means in our
personal profiles and in groups.
Fifth: Pages that share content that doesn’t encourage
or receive interaction will lower that page’s visibility. So
having no updates is better than having updates that are
ignored.
6 Southern Writers
The False News
There is a specific type of Facebook post that’s making
the rounds right now. It either says, “All I see are the
same 25 people in my news feed…” Or “I want to know
who exactly can see this post because of the recent
changes in the Facebook algorithm…”
Any post like this is a lie. FB is not limiting anyone’s
newsfeed to 25 people.
Why False News Matters
1. Part of the new algorithm penalizes posts that share
and/or promote false news. Because a post like this is
false news, it will be penalized.
2. Another part of the new algorithm penalizes posts
that are involved in engagement baiting. Facebook defines
engagement baiting as a post that attempts to manipulate
reader participation. Whether we agree that a post falls
under that category isn’t the issue. Facebook is very strict
about what they consider engagement baiting and will
also heavily penalize those posts.
What Do We Do Now?
Don’t panic. Although the changes coming are fairly
drastic, we can look on this as a challenge. Our goal
as authors should be to connect with our readers and
advertising has never been a good way to do that.
Don’t jump ship. It’s tempting to throw up our hands
and lament the death of professional pages. That isn’t the
case right now, so let’s give this some time to play out
and see what comes next.
Don’t advertise on your personal profile. There’s
nothing in the update that implies this, but those who run
FB aren’t stupid. They’ve got to anticipate that possibility
and my guess is that they’ll be quick to crack down.
In the next issue, we’ll go deeper and explain why
we’re seeing so many posts without a share button and
what exactly FB considers engagement baiting. n
Edie Melson is the author of the bestseller
Connections: Social Media and Networking
Techniques for Writers. She’s the co-director of the
Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference,
Social Media M