Facebook rings the changes. What now for marketers?
StumbleUponA news ticker, smart lists, timelines, updates news feeds and a subscribe button - just some of the changes Facebook announced at its F8 conference recently. But what do these changes mean for marketers? New Media Knowledge asked around for answers. By Chris Lee.
By Chris Lee
At its recent F8 conference, social networking giant Facebook unveiled a number of key changes, including more social ways to share music via Spotify, a timeline, news ticker and the ability to subscribe to a particular friend. Users no longer need to ‘like’ a brand’s page to comment on it, either, reducing the significance of fan numbers for brands as a metric of popularity.
But what do these changes mean for both consumers, for whom Facebook believes they have created a more social Web, and how should brands respond to make the most of these changes?
Far-reaching consequences
For Kwai Chi, head of social media at consultants Total Media, Facebook’s new platform features and minor tweaks have far-reaching consequences for marketers.
“One of the biggest changes is that users don’t need to ‘like’ brand pages before engaging with content. Previously, this was one of the main methods used to measure their success,” Chi told NMK. “Companies need to identify new ways to evaluate their effectiveness. One new tactic would be to use the new ‘share’ metrics. Users now have the power to decide what content they want displayed on their time line. If content isn’t relevant or interesting the less people will click. This will severely limit the contents reach.”
According to Chi, to produce a good content strategy going forward, companies must invest more time analysing insights and understanding audiences to enable them to produce engaging and relevant material.
That’s entertainment
Drew Benvie, group managing director of PR company Hotwire PR, believes that Facebook could change entertainment the same way that it has changed word-of-mouth marketing.
“Whether marketing music, video and TV content, or simply looking to get brand messages to cut through the noise, marketers must start looking at platforms that can be created and influencers that can build interest in a new type of social media," he said.
How brands should respond
Given the significant changes in user experience, marketers will now have to fight harder than ever for space on an already crowded platform, according to Joanna Morley, social media and online PR manager at digital agency SiteVisibility. As well as fan ‘likes’ counting for less than ever before, Facebook’s ‘Edgerank’ - the protocol which decides what content is prioritised on news feeds according to user interaction rates – will now rely more heavily on levels of engagement.
“You can have a million fans but if only one per cent of them engage with you then you’re visibility isn’t going to be far,” she argued. “When you visit Facebook, you should see the things you’re most interested in. It’s not clear how many people will actively personalise their results but if they do then are people going to choose to get updates from a brand? Potentially not. Therefore marketers are going to have to fight to retain a share of voice on Facebook. Since users now have more control over their news feeds, brands with boring or irrelevant updates will have lower visibility. They will still show up in the ticker, however.”
According to Morley, brands need to do the following things to keep on top of the new Facebook changes:
- Brands must drive engagement as much as possible to ensure new content is seen
- Post more frequently as the ticker enables users to comment, like, and interact with all content types as they’re posted
- Post more photos. Due to the changes, photos posted to pages are showing up smaller than other personal content so marketers will need to adjust your posting strategy to ensure maximum visibility
Paul Harrison of marketing specialists Carve Consulting concluded: “I think the most elegant way to describe the impact on brands is how [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg described it: is that in its first iteration, Facebook was like the first 15 seconds of meeting someone: what’s your name, where are you from. The current Facebook iteration is akin to those first 15 minutes of meeting someone – what do you like, who are your friends, what are our shared interests. The new iteration is about your whole life: shared experience, shared content, shared friends, stretching back as long as you’ve been on Facebook. The impact for brands is that the opportunities for engagement are going to be richer, deeper, and more long lasting. But unquestionably these changes also point toward social ads (including sponsored stories) assuming a greater importance going forward.”
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