The 2018 Facebook Algorithm Changes

The golden rule of social media marketing is to make sure you are using the channel the way your users want to use it instead of how you want them to use it. This is especially true on Facebook, and is also the reason they made some significant changes to the algorithm that determines what shows up in person’s feed.

This video will help you understand the changes that were made and provide some basic suggestions on how to play within the new rules. We’re also going to release other videos with more specific things you can do to get better results out of your page.

The changes boil down to one thing that Facebook has learned: people want to connect with their friends and families; and NOT be bombarded by news, advertising, or other distractions. Fair point, right?

So they made 3 changes to their algorithm:

• Prioritized Feeds
• Reward High Post Engagement
• Give preferential treatment for using multiple Facebookfeatures.

Prioritized Feeds
The most significant change they made was to create a priority system for what stories populate a person’s feed: They give first priority to you family. Then friends. Then groups you’ve signed up for.
Notice what’s not there? Business and entertainment pages and the like. So even though someone has liked pages for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Nabisco, Taylor Swift, Star Wars or Verizon, it will be very rare for their stories to wash up in a person’s feed. To view posts of pages you’ve liked, you now have to scroll down and click on “Pages Feed.”

Now there are a bunch of ways to get pages you manage onto someone’s feed. So don’t abandon all hope just yet. I’ll get to some of those things shortly, but we’re also putting together a whole other video of things you can do to keep in touch with your followers.

Reward Engagement
Facebook also pays a lot of attention to posts that get a lot of attention. Especially right after the post goes live. The deeper the engagement, the better your score. So when someone responds to you your post, reply back to them and try to engage them in a conversation. If you react with an emoji, don’t just hit the Like button – hit love or one of the deeper emojis. Posts that get shared a lot make a big difference. Anything that shows Facebook that this post is really engaging has a better chance of breaking through to the personal feeds of your followers.

Added Value for Native Use
Another thing you can do is to just plain use Facebook. They’ve worked really hard to provide an expansive sandbox to play in. And they’re going to reward you for using it. And reward you for getting your followers to use it.
Whenever possible, use as many of their features as you can. Update your Stories, read and react to the stories of your followers. Use Messenger and Marketplace, send events and pay attention to it by reacting to responses, create private and public groups and maintain them. And they LOVE when you use the Live Video feature. But whatever you choose, make sure you’re using it authentically to engage with others. They want to reward organic use of their platform; and punish inauthentic usage.

They pay attention to posting, sharing, and commenting patterns. They downgrade posts made from 3rd party apps and utilities (so no more using HootSuite, or buffer, or other apps to post). They downgrade pasted links to outside videos or websites (whenever possible, be sure to add videos and photos directly into FB, no pasting YouTube or other links). And they’ve added safeguards to try and figure out if you’re a business trying to artificially boost your reach. So just be sincere in trying to connect with your followers.

That will show them you LOVE using Facebook, and want to keep your followers using Facebook.

All this is just scratching the surface of simple things you can do to keep using Facebook as a way to connect with, and grow, your audience. Hit the next video on our series for more tips and tactics.

Check out this video and others on our YouTube channel for more tips and tactics.

Until next time… happy Facebooking!