In typical Facebook fashion, the social network announced some changes to its News Feed this week. There was nothing major to report, but from a business standpoint, it could change how many people read your content.
Content Visibility
The major change announced this week was that older content will get a second chance at life. This means that if an article you post gets a lot of engagement (likes, comments, shares) it will appear higher in someone’s News Feed later on. Popular stories will be seen by more users, even if these stories are a few hours old.
So if someone who likes your page logs onto Facebook, but doesn’t scroll down far enough to see the article you posted, it will jump higher on their News Feed if it received a lot of engagement.
According to Facebook, the average user reads about 53% of the stories in their news feed, this change will increase that rate to 70%.
Engagement is King
The takeaway message here is that engagement has become even more important than before. You need to post content that your readers not only want to see, but also want to share their opinions on. Likes, comments and shares will increase the number of people who read your content. So make it worth talking about.
Take a look at your previous posts. What got people talking? Think about your content that received the most engagement. Invest in creating and sharing similar content. The content that your audience responds to will change, so keep monitoring and always be mindful of the posts your followers interact with most.
For tips on how to create content for your audience, check out our blog post on creating a content calendar.