FB Algorithm...friend or foe?

Hardly a month goes by that we don’t see some kind of tweak made by Facebook to it’s news feed algorithm. Each time they make a change, social media managers throw their hands up in disgust and instead of figuring out how to make the change work for them, spend their time bashing the change and bashing Facebook and proclaiming “Facebook is killing itself”.

I couldn’t disagree more. In the big picture, the reality is that every change Facebook makes is based on the data they are seeing about what kinds of content people across Facebook are engaging with in an attempt to make the news feed something people want to check frequently, instead of avoiding or skipping when they log in.

For us as advocacy organizations or electoral campaigns who want people to engage with us these tweaks actually make it more likely our engaged audiences will see our content.

Yep I said that. Let’s look at the most recent change for an example of this. Within the last few weeks Facebook announced that posts that are overly promotional will get reduced placement in newsfeeds, or punished with few impressions. Immediately I saw people upset about how this was going to kill advocacy on Facebook.

Let’s look at the kinds of posts Facebook is actually going to be “punishing”...they offered this one as an example:

Now look at that post carefully. How often do you see advocacy post content that’s similar to that? Rarely, if ever. IMHO, if you’re posting content that’s self promotional like that you’ve already failed Social Media 101.

The bottom line is that by showing people less content like that and more actually interesting and engaging content, we all win.

Drew Bernard of Action Sprout and I are hoping to lead a discussion that digs into this deeper at Rootscamp. If you’d like to join us, please upvote our session on Rootscamp’s Session Voting Page here...scroll down to the one titled “The Facebook Algorithm Isn’t the Enemy”.

How Identity Influences Online Content Sharing
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the idea that content that gets a lot of engagement starts with the basic premise that people have to want to be seen engaging with that content...this goes to the next step of thinking about what kind of content is it that people want to be seen engaging with.

Why it's important to humanize your brand on social media
For anyone who has ever been at any of my trainings, this won’t be news but provides a nice overview of why it really is ok to show personality on social media- even an organizational presence with some tips on how to do so.

Tumblr Overtakes Instagram As Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is The Fastest-Growing App
Some good stats on the “Not FB or Twitter” platforms.

The 5 Big Reasons People Aren't Following Your Social Media Accounts
Another perspective on some of the basic best practices for engaging social media.

Have you been using some cool new social media tools? Let me know by emailing me at beth@beckerdigitalstrategies.com or tweet 'em at me!

Facebook So many updates so little time so for this month I’ll do a quick description and provide you with a link to learn more:

Now an app: Groups! Just like Pages manager, this allows you to manage your groups from your phone via the Groups app.(FWIW, I use it and find it much easier to use than to do groups in the usual FB app.)

The changes to FB Ads isn’t new but this was a really good step by step primer on using the new set up of campaign, ad sets and ads.

And in the newsletter intro this month I talked a bit about FB Algorithm changes and still maintain this is nothing for advocacy/campaign social to be worrying about...again, if you are overtly being promotional enough to get dinged for this, you deserve to be, imho, but here’s the official FB announcement for this particular algorithm tweak: News Feed FYI.

Twitter Oh the changes….they are coming fast and furious...none that have actually happened yet, but here’s what to watch out for in the early months of 2015:

The addition of a “While You Were Away” section...if you click on it you’ll be shown tweets that Twitter’s algorithm decides you might have wanted to see if you’d been logged in when they were tweeted.

TIn app video: Shoot, edit and post video all within the Twitter app...no further details available publicly as of yet but this will most likely build off of what Vine does since Twitter bought Vine a while back.

More curated timelines around big events. If you saw the curated World Cup Twitter timelines expect to see more of the same. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this turned into a revenue stream where sponsors could pay to have say a dedicated Oscars stream or some such I certainly hope that as part of their gov related work they’ll do dedicated feeds for the 2016 Presidential debates.

Direct messages revamps: Rumored to include the ability to embed a tweet into a DM easily, and a clearer difference in the writing of a DM vs Tweet to help preclude sending a DM as a Tweet. (If you missed this LOL last week, go ahead and click for a giggle.)

Rootscamp 2014 By far one of my favorite political gatherings of the year. This unconference put on by New Organizing Institute is always a source of inspiration, a great place to meet people, reconnect with old friends and learn.

Netroots Nation 2015 To be held next year close to home in Phoenix, Arizona this is a don’t miss conference!

Lesson #1: If you set up a campaign with automated social posts like the New England Patriots did...make sure you have a system in place for human moderation before anything actually posts.

Lesson #2: If you ask a question on the internet or ask people to do something, just like in a courtroom, make sure you’ve thought it all the way through from every angle possible...which Bill Cosby obviously didn't do.

Beth