Facebook has always been clear about the fact that they aim to give their users the most interesting possible experience every time they visit the platform.

With Facebook’s recent algorithm changes, to get your content noticed has become a lot more complicated – especially for page managers.

The way you use Facebook largely determines what is shown in your News Feed. One should remember that there are more than a billion people use Facebook each month and a lot of content is being shared. Since the launch of Facebook Ads and Pages, the amount of content on Facebook is astounding. This means that chances are greater for users’ News Feeds to get crowded. There are over 18 million pages on Facebook, many of which are actively looking for ways to show up in people’s News Feed in order to increase brand awareness.

With all of this content on Facebook, the typical user has about 1500 stories that could show up in their News Feed.

Facebook’s algorithm has changed a few times over the years, as it should. Many people don’t understand why these changes were implemented, but then again they don’t know the statistics influencing the decisions being made. Nobody wants to see over a 1000 stories in their News Feed every time they visit the platform.

Let’s look at some of the aspects in which Facebook’s algorithm has changed and what it means.

Facebook’s algorithm change

Affinity, Weight and Decay

Affinity: How close is the relationship between the user and the source?
Weight: What type of action was taken on the content?
Decay: How recent is the content?

These factors will determine whether or not content is shown in a specific user’s News Feed.

Relationship Settings

With these settings users can choose how much content they see of their friends and the pages they like. You can easily hide updates from people by selecting the ‘unfollow’ option. You won’t unfriend the user, but their updates won’t show up in your News Feed.

Post Types

The News Feed algorithm takes into account the type of posts each user tends to like. If, for example, you interact more with photo posts, then you will see more photo posts in your News Feed.

Hide Post

Users now have the ability to hide posts or mark them as spam. The Facebook algorithm will try to decide what the probability is of the user hiding the next similar post. You will probably have to hide a few similar posts to see a change in what is showing up in your News Feed, but eventually Facebook will get the message.

The change in Facebook’s algorithm pose new challenges for brands and marketers hoping to get attention on Facebook. It’s more important than ever to post quality, engaging content.

Here are a few ways to still get the attention you seek on Facebook:

Create and publish a variety of interesting content. Ideally you should post more than once per day. To find out when is the best time to post updates, you can look at your fan page’s Insights.
Content should ideally attract shares, comments, likes and clicks – in other words fans need to engage with your content.
In order to create engagement you need to understand your Facebook fans, and what they want to get from your page.
As a general rule – use high quality, relevant images for your posts.

It’s imperative for page managers to have a content strategy in place. Know what you want to post about and when you’re going to post what. Based on the amount of likes and comments you can determine what type of content is more popular. Use this data and adapt your content strategy for Facebook.

How did Facebook’s algorithm updates affect your fan page? We’d love to hear from you – chat to us in the comments.