Social Media B2B

B2B companies are now using Facebook as part of their marketing and word-of-mouth strategy. Some organizations are using it well, while others are still in the experimental phase. However, what many organizations have yet to discover is that Facebook’s recent changes to their news feed will drastically impact how your information is spread.

Recently, Facebook rolled-out changes to its News Feed, you can get the full detail from Inside Facebook. There is one major item that your organization needs to understand from these changes:

News Feed distribution to all fans is no longer guaranteed

Yes, you read that correctly. Before this change, you could publish content on your Fan Page and be guaranteed that is would be displayed in the News Feed of each Fan of your page. This is no longer the case. Your page updates will still appear in the Live Feed of all your fans, but they have to switch to view that feed, because the News Feed is the default feed that is displayed when a user logs into Facebook.

Start Thinking Of Facebook As Google

Google and other web applications like Digg and Reddit have used algorithms to help rank and organize information. Facebook is doing the same thing with its updated News Feed. No one is exactly sure what it takes for information to be displayed in the News Feed instead of only in the Live Feed. Log into your own Facebook page and toggle between the News Feed and Live Feed at the top of your page. You will notice a big difference in content between the two.

Facebook, like Google, is trying to improve the overall user experience of its platform and serve relevant information to its users. In marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) has long been a term to describe how to enable Google to better rank and organize your Web site content for specific keywords. Now that Facebook has gotten into this same kind of content serving game, B2B organizations need to start thinking about Facebook News Feed Optimization.

Engagement Is Key When Optimizing For Facebook’s News Feed

According to Facebook Product Manager Peter Deng, Pages are being treated similarly to friends. Facebook will take into account:

* How many people (and especially your friends) comment on and like stories from Pages you’re a fan of
* Which Pages you visit frequently
* Which Pages you interact with frequently

If you are a B2B company who uses Facebook as a distribution outlet for articles, blog posts and other content, but does not focus on engagement, then your content will spread to less people then organizations that are engaged.

Tips For Improving Content Engagement Within Facebook

1. Ask Questions To Your Fans.
2. Don’t Just Publish. Add additional Information in the comments of a post.
3. Give fans ownership and recognition for their participation on the page.
4. Post varied media including text, photos, and video.
5. Have employees and customers help promote engagement by commenting and liking items.
6. Be Interesting. It sounds simple but good content makes engagement easier.
7. Have offline events to help drive interest and engagement at events like industry tradeshows.

Like it or not Facebook is changing the way organizations use their platform. How will you promote engagement?

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