Facebook announced a change to its news feed algorithm today that will force marketers to keep on their toes if they want to their content seen.

In order to reduce the number of low-quality links Facebook users see in their news feeds, the algorithm will allow Facebook to show more stories that users will find informative and entertaining, according to Adam Mosseri, vice president, News Feed, for Facebook.

“Our research shows that there is a tiny group of people on Facebook who routinely share vast amounts of public posts per day, effectively spamming people’s feeds,” he said. “Our research further shows that the links they share tend to include low quality content such as clickbait, sensationalism, and misinformation. As a result, we want to reduce the influence of these spammers and deprioritize the links they share more frequently than regular sharers.”

The update will only apply to links, such as an individual article, Mosseri said, not to domains, pages, videos, photos, check-ins or status updates.

The goal is to make the News Feed more newsy, and to cut down on the type of click-bait, sensational stories that have been becoming more and more prevalent. In the days of ‘alternative facts,’ ‘post-truths’ and ‘fake news’ this is probably a good idea.

So what does that mean for you? It most likely means that the cost of Facebook advertising it about to increase or, if you don’t pay for advertising already, you may be forced to. Also, if you tend to post many different things every day, you may want to tone it down a bit, pay more attention to your analytics and focus on fewer, but more targeted advertisements.

Other than that, Mosseri said the many publishers won’t see any changes.

Our advice is to continue to go about your Facebook advertising  in the the right way, and that means focusing on content that is:

  • Meaningful, or apt to get a lot of engagement
  • Informative, or more likely to be shared among users
  • Authentic, or original.
  • Complete. Don’t use partial headlines that withhold information required to understand what the content of the article is about; those will be labeled as lick bait and factored out.

Shareable content will always win out. As long as you continue to post content that provides value to your audience and is relevant to readers, this latest algorithm change will not change your reach too much.

What are your concerns? Let us know in the comments!