Learning from the F8 Conference

It was the much awaited Facebook conference for developers that took place around 2 weeks back. Here are some key understandings from it for social media professionals:

The New News Feed: With the new updates, the content posted on Facebook gets seen by only 10% of your friends. Facebook makes it difficult for brands to be visible to fans and followers. As a marketer you definitely need to work harder on the content, to get more visibility. Other changes include the new single column Facebook feed. The like, share and follow options are on the profile picture. Facebook seems to be focussing on the visual appeal of the feed as photos and videos are more highlighted now. Clearly, Facebook is looking to encourage better quality content.

The New Place for Tabs: Now, you cannot see the tab icons at all. The tabs are now on the “More” dropdown. This is definitely a big change for marketers. Promote your tabs through your bio and posts by placing a link of the tabs there. Start looking at Facebook marketing in a completely different way.

The New Algorithm: Photo albums (180%), photos (120%) and videos (100%) get more engagement than links and text-only posts. Posts that ask fans to like get 3 times more likes, posts that ask fans to comment get 3 times more comments and posts that ask fans to share get 7 times more shares. Include one of these ‘call to actions’ and get more engagement on your posts. Posts with a maximum of 250 characters get 60% more likes. Keep your content interesting by adding more photos and videos. Try to keep your post titles short and exciting. Ask questions and be more participative in the conversation.

The Right Way to Use Links and Images Don’t delete the embedded link box that automatically pops up when you paste a link into Facebook. Upload the post image into this link with the help of the upload image option in the pop out and get more chances to be seen. Keep the image size at 600x600 pixels. Edit the title and description in the pop out and make it more accurate to the information provided by the link.