Hopefully, the title of this article will help you understand the reason why Facebook is making the change that it is.
Last week, Facebook announced that it will be changing its News Feed algorithm once again. In its quest to make users News Feeds as engaging and valuable as possible, Facebook is changing its algorithm to show users articles that contain more engaging content and less of the clickbait-style articles that users click on, and leave immediately when they discover the article they clicked on has nothing to do with the headline they clicked on.
In a post by Moshe Blank and Jie Xu, the two Facebook employees said, “ We’re learning that the time people choose to spend reading or watching content they clicked on from News Feed is an important signal that the story was interesting to them. We are adding another factor to News Feed ranking so that we will now predict how long you spend looking at an article in the Facebook mobile browser or an Instant Article after you have clicked through from News Feed. This update to ranking will take into account how likely you are to click on an article and then spend time reading it.”
The takeaway for content creators and publishers is that it’s no longer about the quantity of clicks an article receives, it’s now about the quality of those clicks and is the content valuable enough to earn the users time and attention. If you’re looking for some fresh ideas or wondering what is the best way to ensure you’re creating and delivering great content to your audience, take a look at this article on the Top Social Media Publishers for March 2016, from there you can do some research into the type of content they are creating and try to implement some their strategies, into yours.
If you’re asking yourself how does Facebook choose what to show in users News Feeds, take a look at this visual that breaks it down in the simplest terms.
Image by techcrunch.com
Although the headline of this post wasn’t entirely misleading, a better title would be something like “What you need to know about Facebook’s News Feed change”. Remember to focus on the keeping the headline of the article relevant to the content inside, and more importantly ensure the content inside is worthy of the readers time.