If there is one thing Blue Archer loves it is Facebook. Some of the platform's newest updates may be unsettling at first, but we will show you how to cope. We are going to explore some of the updates that may impact marketers as well as updates that make our lives a little easier. 

No More Promotional Posts

If anything makes us look twice it is the fact that starting January 2015 Facebook will be eliminating promotional posts. We quickly researched to confirm this update with some of our favorite industry leaders.

Let's start off with what a promotional post is. A promotional post is not a typical Facebook ad, however, you can spend advertising money on promoting a specific organic piece of content. This is what Facebook is doing away with.

So what does this mean? Not that big of a deal. We fell in love with Facebook Ads and PowerEditor for quite some time. We advise anyone that is use to sponsoring their posts to check out your options. Basically, Facebook thinks that if you want to sound like an advertiser, you should just bite the bullet and make an ad. 

What to Watch For:

• If you decide to go ahead and promote your posts anyway, especially if you promote a significant amount, you may take a distribution hit
• Business pages may start sending out better content instead of buying reach
• If you do not create great content, you may not reach anyone at all

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Google and Facebook are both pushing the content is king theory. The only thing it can ultimately do will be eliminating annoying, cheesy ads, and replacing it with quality content. 

Easy to Unfollow

First, Facebook has a new feature that will highlight the people, pages and groups you saw the most in your news feed during the past week. If you think that person, page or group is annoying, you can easily unfollow it. As a result, you’ll still like the page, friend that person or be part of that group, but you won’t see them in your news feed anymore.

Jon Loomer

That doesn't seem so bad, you may think, but paired with the inability to promote content this may significantly impact your company's ability to reach users. Your likes will not effected, but less people may see your content despite liking your page.

However, this could do you a big favor and filter out those that do not care about what you are posting either way. Your fans should be people that want to see your posts. 

“And in every decision that we make, we optimize for the first, for making it so that the people who we serve, who use Facebook, and who are reading News Feed get the very best experience that they can,” he said. “And that means that if a business is sharing content that’s going to be useful for them, then we’ll show that. But that means if the business is sharing content that isn’t going to be useful for them, we may not show that.”

Mark Zuckerberg

Additional Updates

Not all of the recent updates are terrible, though. Even the ones that could impact marketers are only making content and digital advertising more interesting. The industry is constantly changing which means we need to always stay on our toes. We take it as a challenge, not a roadblock. 

Secret App
The not-so-secret secret app that Facebook has been working on has recently gained media attention. To start off, pretty much everyone uses Facebook from your little pre-teen sister to your Grandma that is pushing 80. Wouldn't it be pretty cool if you could have a Facebook for work? They think so. 

This app will allow professionals to work more efficiently. Facebook, as with any other social media platform, currently does the opposite of that. This will use social networking to allow employees to discuss projects and post photos with each other. It will be separate from a personal Facebook and require a different login. 

Privacy Policy
Call us optimists, but we like to end on a good note. Our beloved platform finally decided to make its privacy policy more transparent. First off, their previous one was difficult to understand to the everyday user and barely existant considering how much information Facebook tends to collect. 

What to Know

• The privacy policy is easier to read
• Users now have more control when it comes to information being collected for advertising
  • Facebook will still track you unless you use a third-party program to opt out 

We are looking forward to the ever changing platforms, and what we may have to learn and work with in the future. Stay in touch to keep informed for your business or let us do the legwork for you.