Facebook will give more room to posts from friends, family and groups and less to business pages, so most pages should expect lower reach. Posts that start real conversations will fare better than posts asking for likes.

What Facebook announced

Facebook announced yesterday that it is changing how the News Feed decides what people see. Posts from friends, family and groups will get more room. Posts from businesses, brands and media will get less.

The stated aim is to favour what Facebook calls meaningful interactions between people over passive scrolling. The company has said plainly that pages should expect their reach to fall.

For a small business with a Facebook page, this is one of the biggest changes to the platform in years. It is also less dramatic than some of the coverage suggests.

Why it is happening

Facebook's explanation is that public posts from pages have been crowding out personal ones, and that time spent talking to people you know is better for you than time spent watching content.

It has said it expects people to spend less time on Facebook as a result. That is an unusual thing for the company to say, and a sign the change is meant seriously.

Whatever the reasons, the effect on pages is the same. Space in the feed is limited, and more of it is going to friends and family.

What changes for a business page

The fourth is the one to take most seriously. Facebook has said that pages whose posts people generally do not react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases, and that describes a great many small business pages.

What does not change

The page still exists, and its posts still appear in the feed, though there may be fewer of them. Nobody is switching business pages off.

People who visit the page directly still see everything on it: the hours, the phone number, the reviews, the photographs and the posts.

Followers who want every post can choose See First for the page in their News Feed preferences. Few will, but your most loyal customers might, if asked.

Messages to the page still arrive. Events still work. And the announcement says nothing about advertising, which runs on a separate system.

Conversations, not likes

The change rewards posts that people talk about with each other: not just a like, but comments, replies to comments, and shares with something said.

A post asking a real question customers have opinions about tends to start that kind of conversation. So does a post about something local that people want to discuss with their neighbours.

Posts that ask outright for interaction get the opposite treatment. Since December, Facebook has been demoting what it calls engagement bait: posts telling people to like, share, tag a friend or comment a particular word.

The difference is whether the conversation would happen anyway. A question worth answering starts one. An instruction to comment does not.

A worked example

An independent bookshop on a neighbourhood shopping street posts on its Facebook page most days: new arrivals, a staff pick, the occasional sale.

The posts that reached the most people last year were not the sales. They were a photograph of a battered first edition a customer brought in, and a question about books people had been given and never read.

Both started long comment threads, with customers replying to each other rather than to the shop. That is exactly the behaviour the new feed is designed to favour.

The posts that reached almost nobody were the ones nobody answered: a photograph of a new display, a reminder of the opening hours, a link to a review.

So the shop's plan for this year is to post less often, ask more questions people genuinely want to answer, and keep its opening hours where they belong: in the page's details and on the website.

Groups and why they matter

Facebook named groups alongside friends and family. Posts in groups people belong to will get more room in the feed, not less.

For a business, that is worth noticing but not rushing. A group works where customers already have something to talk about together: a running club, a class, a hobby, a neighbourhood.

A group created only to get around the change, with nothing for members to discuss, will be as quiet as the page.

What this means for the website

A Facebook page has always been rented space. The platform decides who sees what, and it has just changed the terms.

The website, and an email list of customers who asked to hear from you, belong to the business in a way a page never will. That is where the relationship should end up.

The practical step is small: make sure the page links clearly to the website, and that the website gives people a reason to stay in touch directly.

What not to do

Do not delete the page. Customers still look businesses up on Facebook, and a missing page raises more questions than a quiet one.

Do not post more often to make up for lower reach. More posts nobody reacts to is exactly what the change is designed to push down.

And do not buy likes or followers. They never helped, and followers who never react add nothing to a page whose reach now depends on reactions.

The counter-case

For many small businesses, this changes less than the headlines suggest.

Unpaid reach for business pages was already low before this week. A business that gets most of its work from search, referrals and repeat customers may notice little difference in its phone calls.

And a page that serves mainly as a listing, with hours, a phone number and reviews, loses almost nothing, because that job never depended on the feed.

For pages that relied on posting, the advice is the same either way: post less, start real conversations, and move the relationship to the website and the email list.

This week

  1. Open the page's Insights for last year.
  2. Find the posts people actually talked about.
  3. Stop posts that ask for likes or tags.
  4. Check the page's hours and contact details.
  5. Link the page clearly to the website.
  6. Ask loyal customers to choose See First.
  7. Plan fewer, better posts for February.

Step two tells you what to do next. The posts that started conversations last year are the clearest guide to what the new feed will favour, and nearly every page has a few.

Planning those posts belongs in the quiet weeks, along with the pages in the slow month is for writing.

Frequently asked questions

What did Facebook change in the News Feed?

It announced that the News Feed will favour posts from friends, family and groups, and show fewer posts from businesses, brands and media.

Will my business page still appear?

Yes. Page posts still appear in the feed, though fewer of them, and people visiting the page still see everything on it.

Which posts will do worst?

Posts people generally do not react to or comment on, and engagement bait that tells people to like, share, tag or comment.

Which posts will do better?

Posts that start real conversations between people, such as a genuine question customers want to answer, where they reply to each other as well as to you.

Does this affect Facebook advertising?

The announcement concerns which unpaid posts appear in the feed and says nothing about advertising, which runs on a separate system.

Should I post more to make up for it?

No. More posts that nobody reacts to is what the change is designed to push down. Fewer posts, each one worth a reply, suit it better.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Business page reach about to fall?

Send us your page. We will tell you which of last year's posts point the way forward.

Start a Conversation