Well, well, well. Has Facebook finally seen the light? A slumping share-price. A drop in users, and not surprisingly, lower engagement. They also now have increasing competition from platforms they haven’t bought – Tik-Tok and YouTube.
They may have made some updates which may turn things around for them.
Before I get to that, I just want to share my disappointment with you about Facebook. Honestly, if you look back through this blog you will have read my absolute support of this social media platform. But in a pursuit of the bottom line they really have made it a very unappealing platform.
From an advertisers point of view, they have made it a much less valuable a channel by switching off the very audiences we are trying to reach. Combine that with the impact Apple’s privacy protection it’s really gone down my own list of priorities in terms of where I spend my budget, time and resources.
They have changed from an opportunity to grow your reach and impact like never before, to the exact opposite.
The bottom line is that they want to make it look more like their competition (yes copy their competition). And drive up engagement and usage which is a good thing. Remember when stories first arrived on Instagram and Facebook? Copied from SnapChat. Reels? Tik-Tok.
The big update is that it’s we now effectively have two news feeds. Home and Feeds.
Feeds is all your existing friends, pages and groups.
Home is what Facebook thinks you will be interested in seeing. Suggested content. As Facebook puts it, ‘Home is where discovery happens.’ Here is the BIG opportunity. Facebook is going to put content it thinks you would like but don’t follow infront of you in this feed. An amazing opportunity for you to grow and reach more people.
Why is this important?
Other platforms are actively pursuing this strategy of ‘suggested content’ and they are taking the content creators with them. Because content creators at heart want to grow and expand their reach. Because the content creators spend less time and energy on Facebook its no wonder there has been the impact to it’s bottom line as I said in my introduction.
The second part to this is that social media users are now used to suggested content. And often will engage with it. Suggested content gives users more reasons to go back on social. It becomes short form entertainment or engaging information. Because our friends will only ever create so much content. Facebook for sure will have already tested this out and seen positive results.
Your Turn
What do you think about suggested content? Do you use it? I know I already do in videos on Facebook. I’m already hooked. Comment below and let us know what you think.
