In a move that can’t happen quickly enough, Facebook has announced that content posted to the site by way of auto-posting tools is going to see exponentially decreased reach. Let the celebration begin.
I’ve long loathed auto-posting tools that share the same content across multiple platforms. I don’t care what music you’re listening to on Spotify. I don’t care what you’ve pinned on Pinterest and I think it’s awesome that you’re going on a ten-mile run. But those are the things I skip over in the newsfeed and routinely ignore. These are all what Facebook calls “implicitly shared” stories and of course, they get little engagement. They’re not designed for engagement; they’re designed to feed our need to tell people what we’re doing at any given moment in the day. Facebook’s latest move purportedly to continue to improve the News Feed and focus on explicitly shared content.
Implicitly Shared Stinks, What’s Explicitly Shared Mean?
Explicitly shared content is content that you specifically choose to share on Facebook when you’re in an app. For instance, if you’re posting something to Instagram, there’s a screen that will allow you to choose to also share that on Facebook. See the image below for what that looks like. So, if you have an app that currently implicitly shares content, you might want to rethink your design and modify it so that it’ll make that sharing explicit instead.
More Focus on Messenger with Message Dialog
Facebook is uber-focused on getting you to use Messenger, its messaging app. In fact, every time you send a message to someone who’s not using Messenger, Facebook sends a note asking you if you want to invite them to use it. It annoys me regularly. Facebook claims to have 200 million people using Messenger on a monthly basis and I assume there’s great value in that data, so it’s no surprise that these changes also promote Messenger. Facebook suggests you can “share in a more personal way with the Message Dialog.” Message Dialog allows you to share content by displaying it in a conversation thread on Messenger.
More Mobile First Design: “Send to Mobile” and “Like Button” for Mobile
Facebook lagged behind for a long time in focusing on mobile and while there’s still much room for improvement, they’re making strides. Some new changes include a “send to mobile” capability that you can integrate into your app design. For instance, if people visit your website and login with Facebook, if you’re using Send to Mobile capability, it gives them an automatic notification on their device to download your app. Even better, once you’ve upgraded to that new Facebook login, Send to Mobile works automagically ever after.
The Like Button for mobile is another spiffy thing and gives people the ability to share content from your app with just a tap. It’s still in beta, with only iOS capability right now but Android is in the works. Here’s what that looks like.
Make Sure Your Developers Are in the Know
Bottom line, there are a bunch of changes that you and your marketing team as well as your design and development team need to be aware of and taking into consideration with regard to your website, social sign-ins and any apps you’re using that allow your customers or prospects to consume and share content.
This announcement makes me wonder whether Facebook will eventually weed out its check-in feature, which also, by virtue of its very nature, surely has limited engagement and interaction. The skeptic in me says that Facebook, by virtue of its own interest in your check-in data as well as its interest in “selling” the value of that to small businesses, will let that continue without modification. What say you?
With these changes Facebook continues working to weed out the crap and make the process of finding and intentionally sharing content that’s valuable easier. It also addresses user concerns about sites auto-posting to Facebook on their behalf without any control, which most people find as intrusive and as annoying as I do.
Overall, these changes to the News Feed should benefit both users and brands, with less clutter. Although, of course, the only real benefit to brands using Facebook will be when they allocate an advertising budget to power their content. With all these enhancements to mobile and app-related social sign in and sharing, you can also bet your bottom dollar that Facebook sees great value in the data they’ll be collecting along the way.
The next thing I want Facebook to focus on is automatically banning anyone who engages in the process of tag bombing – posting things and tagging a million people (me included) in the process. This is as welcome to me as a telemarketer’s call at dinner time and I find it happening with more and more frequency.
Want to know more about all these changes and how to incorporate them into your site, apps and overall user experiences, check out the Facebook Developers’ Blog for more info.
Other resources you might be interested in:
Facebook rolls out streamlined look for Pages
Facebook goes back to basics with latest News Feed redesign
Facebook privacy now defaults to friends only (finally)
Facebook Ratchets Back Reach of Auto-posters is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency
