How Facebook’s Newsfeed Works and What it Means to Your Office’s Facebook Posts

The recent F8 conference from Facebook was an extremely important event, it covered a wide variety of topics, both large and small. They released a large number of session videos as well. One session, in particular, is especially useful for business pages. The session , hosted by the VP of Production for Facebook’s Newsfeed, Adam Mosseri, provides a huge amount of useful information to help business pages gain a wider audience. In the video, he explains the processes behind the Newsfeed, going into detail on how posts are ranked. As well as providing helpful information on how businesses can use the Newsfeed to their advantage. The information presented in that video and its effect on Newsfeed-based marketing for your chiropractic practice is what I will be focusing on today.

So How Does The Newsfeed Work?

Before I delve into exactly how the Newsfeed works, I’ll be giving a brief overview of what exactly the purpose of Facebook’s Newsfeed is. As well as going over why it’s such a great tool for chiropractic marketing.

The Purpose of The Newsfeed

In Adam Mosseri’s session on the Newsfeed, he started by explaining the purpose of the Newsfeed. Which is to give people the posts and stories that are most important to the user. Filtering out all of the unimportant posts, to only show the users what matters to them. As Mosseri stated, there is “more and more information for us to consume every day, but only so much time we have in which to do that.”

Thus, the system is designed to cater to the preferences of the user, to only show them posts that the system believes will be important to that specific user. This can make it a powerful tool for marketing, as it’s likely that anyone seeing your posts on their newsfeed will be interested in the content.

How The Newsfeed Picks Posts

Facebook attempts to determine the order of posts on your Newsfeed based on how likely the user is to share, like, or read the post. The algorithm bases its decision for each post on four primary factors.

1. The user or page that posted the content. If the current user regularly interacts with content from this user or page, they’re more likely to see content from this page or user on their Newsfeed.
2. The type of content posted. Types of content that a user often engages with will be given a higher score. For example, if a user almost only looks at image posts, then image posts are far more likely to appear in their Newsfeed.
3. The amount of interaction a post receives. Posts which have been given a lot of interaction will be considered more important. An example would be an important announcement with a large number of likes and comments.
4. The age of the post. While not the most important factor, how recently a post was made can have a significant bearing on whether it will show up on the Newsfeed or not. A post from a month ago most likely won’t show up on anyone’s Newsfeed. Whereas a post made an hour ago is far more likely to show up.

Facebook uses these four factors to provide each post with a relevancy score for that particular user. Then displays the posts with the highest scores on that user’s Newsfeed. The process occurs again each time the user begins a new session on Facebook. Displaying posts which have been made since the user’s last session.

Using The Newsfeed For Marketing

Near the end of Mosseri’s session, he provides some information on how publishers can better utilize the Newsfeed’s systems to maximize the attention their posts receive. He goes on to highlight four practices that should be considered before making a post.

• Create Compelling Headlines: Writing a compelling headline can make it more likely for an article to get onto someone’s Newsfeed. If people see a headline that gives people a sense of the article’s content, they’re more likely to view the article, or give the post a like. Raising the post’s chances of showing up on the Newsfeed of anyone following the page.
• Keep Promotional Content Low: Avoiding content that seems too promotional can be important to audience retention. If the audience only sees promotional content, they’ll gradually lose interest in the page’s posts. Engaging readers with more personally-relevant posts between promotional posts can add variety to the page, and keep the audience interested.
• Experiment as Much As Possible: In the session, Mosseri says that “if I could leave you with one thing, it would be to experiment and try things.” Emphasizing that experimentation is the most important thing. The methods that work for one person may not work for another. For example, Chiropractic Marketing will require a different approach than marketing for something like a supermarket. The target audience isn’t the same, and will respond better to different methods of marketing. The only way to figure out what works best is to try things.
• Utilize Publisher Tools: There are a number of extremely useful publisher tools available, such as Facebook Insights. One of my biggest mistakes early on was not utilizing them to help with my marketing. These tools can provide key information on your content, as well as your audience. Analyzing the data to gauge audience response to your posts, and then acting on that information, is crucial to developing a great marketing strategy. Tools such as Facebook Insights, and the Audience Optimization tools can help you to target users that are most likely to be interested in any content you post.

Conclusion

Facebook’s Newsfeed will prioritize content that each specific user would find engaging. This makes it a challenge for businesses to gain any significant amount of reach with traditional marketing tactics. In order to reach a significant amount of people through their Newsfeeds, the business would need to focus on post engagement levels, as well as interaction with their followers. Encouraging your audience to engage with your page and interact with your posts can significantly improve the general response to marketing posts. As well as giving the page a significantly wider reach. Connecting with followers can be key to marketing via the Facebook Newsfeed. This information doesn’t only apply to those in the chiropractic practice either, it can also be utilized by nearly any other business to achieve higher levels of engagement, and widen their reach.