What to know about the Facebook algorithm in 2021
If content strategy is using stories to create an action or business outcome, then using Facebook to distribute content requires more thought than merely opening up that little blue ‘f’ and hitting publish.
Facebook needs to be used carefully and wisely in a content strategy, or you may find yourself throwing away hours of valuable time for nothing.
You see, Facebook is not a free place to publish content in lieu of creating content on your own website, print, video or email channels. Facebook is a technology platform focussed more on friends, family and community than disseminating news and information - as the recent Facebook news and information ban in Australia shows.
When Facebook writes press releases about its stellar business results - it made $674m in Australia during 2019 - Facebook tells us:
“Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook's apps and technologies to connect with friends and family, find communities and grow businesses.” Note that Facebook doesn’t proclaim that it exists to help publishers, content makers or brands ‘go viral’.
The part Facebook doesn’t write about its mission is this: please keep investing your unpaid time into putting content on our social network so we can continue to give our billions of daily users something to look at and make ad revenue.
The truth is Facebook wants as many people as possible to THINK that it’s worth their time putting content on pages, profiles, groups and messenger to support its advertising revenue.
The reality is that for some businesses, Facebook is a vital part of their content strategy. But it’s not always worth the time investment.
Facebook has a role to play in smart content strategy
In the past, Facebook has been a great tool for distribution and amplification of content. It’s also awesome for advertising targeted offers (but you have to pay for that, not merely hit publish and cross your fingers that something will go viral by organic means alone).
Remember that every time you invest your time putting content on Facebook, you are helping them make a profit rather than achieving your own goal of communicating with family, friends or other businesses. Facebook has 2.7 billion users. It is the world’s most addictive and compelling social network across most age groups and countries.
Facebook leads the world in user numbers, but it’s not designed for organic content distribution in the same way a website or email - or even platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn or Pinterest - are.
What content creators need to know about Facebook
Hootsuite - a social media scheduling tool to make the hell of keeping up with social media manageable - has just published a simple guide to the Facebook algorithm in 2021. Basically, it tells us things we already know, such as:
ORGANIC REACH ON FACEBOOK HAS BEEN DECLINING SINCE 2018 - the average engagement rate is 0.25% in 2020
Organic social media content is the foundation for a social ad strategy that pays for the business outcome or actions that underpin a credible content strategy. Behind every successful social or programmatic ad campaign is a consistent and creative social media and content presence that strengthens brand, relationships, and trust. Publish content on Facebook organically to build brand, not merely get conversions or actions.
THERE ARE FOUR KEY RANKING SIGNALS FACEBOOK RELIES ON - Relationship, Content Type, Popularity & Recency
There are literally thousands of ranking factors that Facebook uses to decide which posts to show to its users, but the key factors are WHO publishes it (relationships) and then WHAT (content type such as video, text, group post, recommendation or whatever). Then you have the more mysterious POPULARITY (which is really how many other people connected to you like, comment or share it) and RECENCY (which is not only recency of publishing date but recency of popularity or interaction, hence why old things resurface in your feed).
AIM TO BE LOVED, NOT GET LIKES
Using social media is a waste of time if you only want conversions or sales. An organic post is NOT about getting a sale or action from that one page update, live or video. Organic posts are about building love, adoration, trust and a relationship with your audience. Use Facebook to do that, and then look for your conversion off the platform (or by using Facebook ads).
FACEBOOK STORIES, GROUPS, LIVES AND LONG FORM VIDEO DO BETTER THAN POSTS, ESPECIALLY FROM BUSINESS PAGES
There are a gazillion different types and ways to publish content on Facebook, but the Facebook algorithm will usually reward the content feature that Facebook’s product managers are most focussed on bringing to success. Facebook stories literally sit above the feed, so offer content creators different opportunity to show your audience something unique than just putting a post in the feed. Video is rewarded as a content type as it is considered ‘sticky’ and brings back users.
The 4 Cs of content strategy are important on Facebook
As long as you know WHY you want to publish content on Facebook - and it’s close cousins Instagram or Messenger - then it’s still a valuable part of a content strategy. Indeed, for some brands, it’s more about managing customer service than using it as a brand-building content play.
Content strategy has four Cs:
Content: storytelling to build brand and reputation
Facebook is still a great place to publish quality content.
Communication: information exchange
The upset at Facebook closing down bushfire information and police news on Facebook shows that many people value the public information they get in their Facebook feed. After all, more people check in with Facebook each day than open a news app.
Community: connections between people
Facebook is especially good if you have an engaged audience in a group, or one that will comment and help other followers when you aren’t around to moderate.
Construction: the processes that ‘govern’ content creation and publishing
Facebook is easy to publish on if you have a tool to schedule content and understand the value of spending time creating content on Facebook brings to your overall strategy.
It’s dangerous to rely on Facebook without building your own relationship with an audience
Small publisher brands that rely on Facebook have had a wake up call that investing in their own website content - even if it’s just a Google Site - is more valuable than posting content on Facebook that can be deleted should the Facebook Gods decide information isn’t valuable.
If you want to know more about the interplay between news sites and Facebook, this story from the ABC is well worth a read. It showed that when Facebook banned news in Australia, traffic to major publishers fell by 13%.
The dark blue line shows traffic to news websites that come from Facebook users - the traffic all but died during Facebook’s February 2021 news ban in Australia.
Australians are posting slightly less news links on Facebook since the disruption of the news ban on February 19 2021.
The ABC found that direct downloads of its news app skyrocketed during the Facebook news ban, leaping to more than 30,000 downloads in one day. This is because the ABC is trusted, valued and respected as an information source.
Equally, the ABC use Facebook ONLY as a means to distribute the content they make and publish on their own website, TV, radio and apps. They do not rely on Facebook for traffic, but instead use it as a channel to distribute and amplify their owned content strategy.
It remains to be seen whether the sharing, likes and comments on news links shared on Facebook will return to pre news-ban levels.
How a well-triangulated content strategy works: informed by audience and business needs.
Content strategy should absolutely use the right social media channels as part of a mix to build business outcomes, but just because Facebook is the largest social media platform doesn’t mean it’s right for every content strategy.
Quality content strategy should drive the right strategic outcomes (for publishers, that might be merely viewing content, but increasingly that model is under pressure). Good content strategy - as opposed to merely making one good content story - should:
Articulate information, themes and narratives to enrich an audience
Deliver a mix of high quality content to support, explain and engage audiences
Have Copy Guidelines and Strategy Documents to explain how to consistently use and publish content
Different businesses naturally have different content strategy needs – some will focus more on the big picture things like information architecture and UX (which become super demanding for large sites, especially government websites) while others focus more on creating content to generate leads or customers.
Of course, all words used in the execution of a content strategy must be brilliant. The story - and message - needs to be compelling.
There are more than 1.5 billion websites out there, but story is what will separate the ideas, narratives and messages that tell us who we are and what we believe.
And Facebook needs to understand that if it wants to be our friend, then it can’t re-send a friend request after unfriending news and information …