Facebook's ongoing changes highlight its need to balance brand participation with its user experience. So what can we learn from this?
It's fair to say that brands and content providers of all descriptions are continuing to develop greater presences on Facebook, which unabated would ultimately lead to the cluttering and spamming of the highly valuable newsfeed.
So Facebook have to make it harder for brands to access a user’s newsfeed. Otherwise the user's experience will decrease along with the user's demand for Facebook. It was always inevitable, which is why Facebook implemented and continue to develop its quality or relevance algorithm, Edgerank.
The most recent change to Facebook, which most directly affects brand pages in the short term, is the removal of a fan's comment on a brand's post. These comments are no longer seen on the fan's newsfeed. This means that the earned impressions the brand once got when the fan's friends saw their comments, are no longer available to the brand.
Most clients probably didn’t place too much value on this in any case, but the industry was starting to place greater focus on this intrinsic advocacy mechanism. A recent ComScore study, 'The Power of the Like' said: "...typical approaches that focus on raw fancounts, or the total number of engagements on a given piece of content, fail to depict the potential and realised scope of social media brand impressions.”
Referring to the affect a brand's content posts have on friends of fans which the study cited as being significant.
So Edgerank and ongoing changes to Facebook make it harder for brands to connect with fans friends and even fans themselves. To me, this highlights two things. Firstly, that brands have historically under delivered on the level of engagement that should be delivered to a brand's fans – setting low expectations of the commitment required.
Secondly, the fans of a brand – the ones that actually have a conversation with the brand in Facebook – will end up being the true fans and adorers not just users with a passing interest in a campaign or free offer.
To overcome these changes, brands will be required to develop Apps and higher standards of branded content to reach fans and their friends. It will undoubtedly cost more but it's a tangible reminder that people are largely indifferent to bland messaging anyway.
If Facebook, from its vantage point, is actively working to filter irrelevant or un-engaging content, which would otherwise threaten the user's experience – that should be a wakeup call.
In reality brands now have to over-deliver on the engagement front, despite the fact that they should have always done so anyway. There is huge value in marketing through Facebook but it requires a committed effort.
On a brighter note, a contact I occasionally speak to at Facebook signs off with: "Keep asking questions!"
It's a great sentiment in this space and something I am sure we will never cease doing.
Damien Hughes
Digital Strategist
JWT Sydney
SOAPBOX: Changing Facebook
11 October 2011