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Facebook’s news feed to prioritise personal content over organisations’

Howard Lake | 17 January 2018 | News

Facebook’s announcement that it will show more content from individuals and less from organisations has made many charity fundraisers and marketers ponder how they should react.
Until now charities have focused on sharing content and interacting with supporters and the public via their Facebook page. Following last week’s announcement this looks likely to be a less effective tactic on its own.

What did Facebook announce?

Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed at Facebook, announced that “over the next few months, we’ll be making updates to ranking so people have more opportunities to interact with the people they care about.”
He added: “we will also prioritise posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.” 
Note that the emphasis is on “people” rather than “organisations”, whether they be for-profit or charities.
In a video explanation he summarised these changes: “person to person [communications] will be more valuable than person to page”.
https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/951619694116487170
 

Why the change?

Mosseri stated that Facebook will “prioritise posts from friends and family over public content, consistent with our News Feed values.”
This suggests that the move is, in part, Facebook’s response to accusations that it has helped spread “fake news” and other manipulative content. It also might be responding to users’ expectations to see more relevant, personal content from friends, family members and other individual contacts.
Mark Zuckerberg himself confirmed the latter in his message explaining the changes. He wrote: “we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
Here’s what Zuckerberg had to say:
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571
It is not exactly new. In June 2016 Facebook announced that it was prioritising friends and family content to keep you “connected to the people, places and things you want to be connected to — starting with the people you are friends with on Facebook.”

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What should charities do?

Chasing every last tweak that Facebook makes to its service is not the best use of fundraisers’ time. Indeed, just using Facebook in a more considered way could be a good tactic for many charities in the fact of this change.
That said, this change could prove a challenge, especially for charities that rely on Facebook to drive traffic and actions. It is a substantial shift. Zuckerberg confirms that, saying: “we’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”
The good news for charities is:

The bad news for charities is:

Which tactics to adopt and test?

More suggestions and comment

Vinay Nair of Lightful told UK Fundraising: “I think we should welcome moves to improve Facebook and generally the quality of engagement on social media. I do think there are some challenges for charities, particularly as the reach of ‘organic’ posts and pages with limited engagement reduces visibility. However, the purpose of the algorithm change is to improve “community” and “meaningful social interactions”, which play directly to the sector’s strengths.
“Unlike most businesses and brands, people are keen to amplify the stories of the causes they care about and how they are fundraising and supporting them. Doing this will lead to more engagement, and so there is actually a real opportunity here for the sector.”
Tom Lillywhite on Medium suggests: “Mobilising packs of micro-influencers is fast becoming the future of organic social media campaigning. We need to employ the credibility, passion and voice of our supporters. By harnessing supporters’ influence on social media we’ll effect real change.” 
He added: “People are 16 times more likely to click on the post of a friend than an organisation, and 135 dedicated supporters sharing a post on Facebook can reach as many people as the same post on a page with 1,000,000 fans.”
Joseph Freeman, also writing on Medium, suggests applying skills and experience your charity might already have. “If you’ve got a separate online community, you should absolutely be looking to see how you can learn from that to start driving more conversations on Facebook posts.” 
He added: “The trend of people just tagging their friends in posts will become more important.”
On live video he advised: “What’s coming up this year that you can do Live, and how can you feasibly add it into your content planning?”


 
On the JustGiving blog Matt Collins reminds us in 5 things you need to know about Facebook’s news feed changes: “Remember, you can still only get your message to 2-5% of people who like your page with any content. Facebook actually was and remains a great way to not reach people.”
Beth Kanter shared her thoughts too. In Facebook Announces Overhaul of Newsfeed: What Does It Mean for Nonprofits? she summarised some reactions from others, and invited readers to share their plans on how to deal with the changes at their nonprofit.
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/951619699829219328

Watch: Nick Burne and Chris Dellaca on charities and the new Facebook feed

Digital experts Nick Burne and Chris Dellaca shared their thoughts on what the latest Facebook feed change might mean for charities and nonprofits, and how they could respond.
https://www.facebook.com/raisethru/videos/1981097738774640/
Source: RaiseThru
 

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