Facebook is continually looking for new ways to improve their user experience. If they can provide a more useful and enjoyable experience, people stay on the site longer, they build a larger (if even possible) user base and they can, in turn, make more money from advertising.
The challenge they have, however, is that a LOT of people, corporations, and others are fighting to be prominent in users’ newsfeeds. If Facebook shows everything to everyone, that’s not a great user experience. Our news feed would be filled with things we simply don’t care about, we would spend less time on Facebook and revenues would fall.
To improve user experience, Facebook has a news feed algorithm.
The goal of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm (as explained by their data engineers) is “to show people the stories most relevant to them, so we rank stories so what’s most important to each person shows up highest in their News Feeds.”
This algorithm is based on Facebook’s core News Feed values; here’s closing look:
Informative
Facebook aims to show content to people that is informative – to them. What’s informative to one group of people might be different than others so Facebook is always trying to learn more about individual user interests. To help in this process, they conduct a Quality Feed Program in which they survey tens of thousands of people each day about what content is informative. They also ask more in-depth questions about what people like to see in their feeds. What they have found from this research is that people find stories informative when they:
- Are related to the person’s interests.
- Engage people in discussion.
- Relate to the immediate world around them.
For staffing firms, we need to a better job of understanding our clients’ and candidates’ interests. If we can create posts that foster engagement, total reach will expand greatly. And finally, we need to look at the local market and tie content around current events.
Friends and Family Come First
Facebook was built around connecting people with their family and friends. The news feed is driven by this concept today. For staffing firms, it’s extremely important to keep this in mind when producing content. A perfect example of this is Haley Marketing’s HIT’s (Hobbies, Interests and Talents) series of content. We share great human interest blog posts about our team and share that content on social media. It receives great engagement with family and friends and that also extends our reach with our staffing audience. When posting for your company think about how to tie in the human element. Get your staff actively involved in sharing content on their own personal feed. Have an internal initiative to engage with your company content. Doing so will greatly expand your reach.
Entertainment
Facebook has found that people turn to the news feed for entertainment. Whether it’s celebrity gossip, funny photos, memes, videos, etc., people want to be entertained. Try mixing in different forms of content (videos, photos, infographics, etc.) and also try mixing in some humor. We find this is the content that gets a lot of engagement.
Authenticity
Finally, a strong post is authentic and genuine. Get away from luring people in with click bait titles only to disappoint. It might work the first few times but it will not consistently drive results. Instead provide real value and be authentic.
When all else fails, buy your way in!
With all of this said, even if you follow all of these rules you might see your company reach and exposure in Facebook continue to fall. But that doesn’t mean you should abandon Facebook! We have found promoted posts and sponsored stories to be extremely effective at driving engagement and results. With a fairly small budget, you can reach a large (and very targeted) audience with your message. From recruiting tough candidates, to driving buyer engagement, Facebook ads can be extremely effective. If interested in learning more, contact our Facebook ad specialists today!