Many businesses have experienced a decrease in their social reach on Facebook within the past six months, and this is due to Facebook’s new algorithm for news feed.  In an effort to avoid overwhelming individuals with Facebook News Feed content that they believe people might skip anyways, Facebook introduced the News Feed Algorithm to deliver the right content to the right people. (This is why organic reach has declined so much for businesses within the past six months.)

      Facebook recognizes that each user has hundreds of connections to friends, family and businesses on Facebook who are all regularly sharing content, thus in an effort to avoid overwhelming individuals with Facebook News Feed content, they created a new algorithm.

1. How engagement really works:

• By increasing your engagement on your Facebook Page, Facebook puts your posts out into the news feed more often. Then Facebook will monitor your posts to see if your fans wither:
  • LIKE
  • COMMENT
  • SHARE
  • CLICK a link 
• If Facebook users are not doing one of these four actions, Facebook thinks your audience is not at all interested in your content.  If Facebook thinks your fans are not interested in your posts, they won’t push your posts out into the news feed and your reach declines.  Hence, REACH and ENGAGEMENT go hand in hand.  

2. Guarantee your fans will see your promotional posts:

• By increasing engagement by creating posts that attract more engagement, you increase your chances of success when you promote and sell on Facebook.  
• The more often you create posts that elicit action – more likes, comments, shares and clicks – you are strengthening your reach and showing up more often in the news feed. 

3. Create action-worthy content:

• If engagement is dependent on LIKES, COMMENTS, SHARES and CLICKS, then the goal is to craft posts that will ensure these actions are happening.  

4. Post with consistent frequency:

• Facebook keeps track of the people or pages a fan interacted with, and gives a small boost to visibility of the last fifty people/pages in the news feed.  
• As a business page, it is ideal to be a part of those last fifty interactions in order to ensure your content gets seen.  

      Many businesses depend on Facebook news feed to get attention.  With the new algorithm, this has had a wide negative affect on a lot of businesses.  Facebook wanted to focus news feed around “high quality” content, and so now many businesses must re-strategize the content they post on Facebook. It’s important to understand how the new algorithm works, and these guidelines will help in crating the right content for the business page.