Facebook is continuing to force marketers to make their Facebook Pages more interesting by downgrading the value of text updates.
In a blog post yesterday, Chris Turitzin, product manager of Facebook’s news feed ranking says that people respond to pure text status updates with text status updates of their own, but only if the initial posts are from friends. If the posts are from Facebook Pages they like, they are less likely to respond.
Turitzin writes: “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. This will help us show people more content they want to see. Page admins can expect a decrease in the distribution of their text status updates, but they may see some increases in engagement and distribution for other story types.”
Basically, Facebook wants Page admins to post content that’s more engaging than just a text update. Unlike Twitter, a pithy quote or a smart comment will not be rewarded as much. Instead, posts containing multimedia, such as images or video will be rewarded with a higher NewsFeed placement, so it can build on more engagement. Facebook will also reward outside links, but only if you use the link share feature, rather than embedding the link within the post, so that a thumbnail plus a description of the article gets loaded.
However, much like Google, Facebook is still being unnecessarily mysterious about exactly the kind of content that Pages need to post in order to get optimal placement in the NewsFeed.
Turitizin writes: “Many Page owners often ask what kind of content they should post. This is difficult to answer, as it depends on who your audience is and what they want to see. In general, we recommend that you use the story type that best fits the message that you want to tell – whether that’s a status, photo, link or video.”
Translation: The only guaranteed way to get preferential placement in the NewsFeed is to pay for ads.
