Facebook Alters Newsfeed, Impacting Posts by Small Businesses

Jan. 12, 2018—Facebook has announced plans to change its news feed, in a move that could, at least initially, negatively impact businesses like repair shops, according to Small Business Trends.

In essense, the social media platform is promoting interaction and engagement among friends, and pushing posts by “Pages” operated by businesses to new areas.

According to Small Business Trends, this move by Facebook could make business marketing a greater challenge. Facebook pages, of course, have become a key element in recent years for businesses seeking to connect with customers. However, this recent alteration by the social media outlet—essentially, the prioritization of pages that have paid for advertising over those that don’t—figures to make content marketing more difficult, particularly with regard to attaining organic reach.

Moving forward, when users are on Facebook’s app, they will see two feed options: an explore feed (noted by a new rocket icon) and a news feed.

The news feed will now be more limited than in the past, which, in theory, could hurt businesses’ opportunity to build their brand in a cost-effective manner; while Facebook users will see posts from their friends on that feed, much information will now shift to the explore feed.

Facebook’s news feed will include sponsored posts, which will still allow businesses the ability to pay their way onto the feed. However, Facebook’s new tweak figures to decrease the chance that posts from businesses will end up in that feed organically.

What’s more, the explore feed button has been shifted by Facebook to the left sidebar, which could make it less noticeable for users, at least initially.

According to Small Business Trends, to circumvent this new change to Facebook’s feeds, businesses may want to consider creating viral-type Facebook videos, and creating especially engaging headlines for their posts.