Facebook Is Making A Major Change - Again

Facebook is rolling out a major change to how it ranks the newsfeed.  What does it mean for marketers?

Growing up, I LOVED the Goosebumps series.  Gotta love scary stories.

I especially loved when they released “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.  At the end of a chapter, you had to make a decision.  That decision impacted what you read next.

Looks like Facebook is taking a page out of that book.

They’re now giving users more control over which friends and pages show up in their feeds.

Earlier this month, the social giant announced new controls to create a more custom flow of content.  You’ll see it rolling out in the next couple of weeks.  It marks a big change in a famously complex algorithm – essentially giving an optional user override.

Technically, the update rolled out last November.  But it was clunky and largely ignored by users, which is why Facebook revamped it after extensive testing of ways to make it more user friendly.

Now people can prioritize the friends and pages of everyone they want to see first.  Which is, of course, why you’ll want to make sure to follow The Silent Partner Marketing.  See what I did there?

The posts you prioritize will appear on the top of the user Newsfeed with a star in the upper right corner.  Following those prioritized posts will be the algorithm fed newsfeed.

On the flip side, the update includes a new way of showing the Pages and friends who have appeared most often in the Newsfeeds of your friends over the past seven days, which gives you the opportunity to easily unfollow those you don’t like.

Interestingly there’s a page that now shows people and Pages that users recently unfollowed (in the event that you made a drunken decision and want to change your mind).

Facebook is also taking a page out of Snapchat and Twitter’s digital book, creating a new “discovery” section that helps people find new Pages to follow.  The section will be populated with pages that, based on your behavior and similar content you follow, may be relevant to you.

Now I’m sure many of you are freaking out.  Allow me to put the kibosh on that.  If you’re worried that it means your followers will start unfollowing your business or won’t prioritize you…perhaps it’s time you started contributing more relevant content to your followers, no?

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Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, New England's #1 Marketing Agency. We're a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology. You can find him onGoogle+, Facebook and Twitter.