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Is Relationship Building on Facebook More Important Now with the Recent News Feed Changes?

Facebook has recently made some huge updates to its interface, changes neither users nor brands have necessarily embraced. In fact, parties from both sides have expressed being downright irate over the tinkering. The tweaks that have most of the community in a frenzy are those related to the news feed, which as we all know, is one of the most important components in the Facebook experience. For marketers, it all results in an increased importance of building relationships on Facebook, so this article will discuss how you can do so and maintain amid the news feed changes.

Make Your Content Trendier

According to Facebook, it made changes to its news feed for one reason – to make status updates more relevant to the user. The company believes that users want to hear from their friends more than the brand pages they like, so those updates are more likely to appear in the new category known as Top Stories. Theses stories are considered the trending topics the user wants to keep up with, so if you are going to reach them through the news feed, you want to make your content as trendy as possible. Whether it’s sports, politics, or other current events, taking the trendy approach can help you earn higher placement in the feed. This trendy content doesn’t necessarily have to be related to your brand, but if you can somehow tie it in, then that’s even better.

Think Engagement

With the Facebook news feed changes in effect, using the platform to actually engage your audience is now more important than ever. The EdgeRank algorithm it utilizes to present updates to the user serves up posts based on a number of different factors, and relationship to the user is believed to be one of the most important. So for example, if a friend publishes an update that receives a lot of comments or likes, that post is likely to rank high in the user’s news feed because Facebook deems it to be important to them. This means that the more engaging your posts and the more action they generate, the more likely they are to reach your fans via the news feed.

Call for Fans to Share Your Content

It was discovered that due to the recent Facebook changes, content that is liked within the network will no longer appear in the user’s news feed. This is a big deal and one that could make it much harder for brands to grow by reaching the friends of their fans. There is, however, a solution to the problem. You may not be able to reach those friends like you could in past times, but you can get to them by convincing fans to share your updates with those friends directly. When taking this route, try not to make a habit of making such requests, and more importantly, make sure your content is worthy of sharing with others so they feel compelled to do it on their own.

The Facebook news feed update has been the central focus of many discussions, and the more the online community talks about it, the more we learn about the implications. If you utilize this social platform as a marketing tool, we highly recommend staying on top of all the latest news surrounding the changes.

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Aidan Hijleh

Email marketing expert Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the Non-Profit Partnership Liaison for Benchmark Email. Aidan ...