Beginning in 2015 you will start to see fewer page posts in your news feed that Facebook considers to be “overly promotional,” the company stated in an announcement yesterday evening.
Having listened to the feedback of an ongoing survey, in which hundreds of thousands of users have participated so far, it has become clear to Facebook that people want to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content.
What’s interesting is that these overly promotional posts tend to come from pages people have voluntarily liked, as opposed to ads that appear in the news feed with or without a user’s consent.
The company chalks this up to the fact that its news feed has measures in place that allow users to control the number of ads seen and the quality of those ads (based on engagement, hiding ads, etc.) However, those same measures are not in place for promotional Page posts.
Soon Facebook will be bringing new volume and content controls for promotional posts in an effort to allow users see more of the content they want to see from the pages they like.
What Are “Overly Promotional” Page Posts?
According to a user feedback survey, here are some traits that make organic posts feel too promotional:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
As of January 2015, fewer of these types of posts will be seen in your news feed. What does this mean for page owners? Facebook sums it up nicely:
All of this means that Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.
The company clarifies that this will not increase the numbers of ads you see instead of organic posts. The idea is just to show more relevant, quality organic page posts in users’ news feeds.
As long as you don’t post overly promotional content, Facebook says you shouldn’t worry about being impacted by this change.
