In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg said:
"We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. But recently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content -- posts from businesses, brands and media -- is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other."
This resulted in Facebook making the decision to change the News feed section, where you can now expect to see more from your friends, family and groups. Facebook users will now see less public content like posts from businesses, brands and media. This means that business pages which had taken advantage of the Facebook Ads will now see a decrease in the reach of their posts. The impact will vary from page to page and from business to business depending on how much interaction their page received.
With more than 1.59 billion users, Facebook comprises of the largest blend of demographics on any social platform. It provides an unlimited medium for businesses to connect with prospective customers all over the world, whilst also keeping an eye on the competition. In the last few years, many companies have chosen to use the Facebook Ad services as a marketing scheme allowing businesses to match with potential clients according to their location, age, gender or interests.
Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed at Facebook, warned that pages using ‘engagement-bait’ to get people into commenting will see their posts demoted in the new feed. Local businesses which use Facebook as their main method of interaction with their audience have been advised to connect with their communities by posting relevant updates and creating events which cater to the community.
With Facebook users spending an average 50 minutes a day scrolling through Facebook this has been the perfect platform for businesses to promote themselves within communities and the international market. But it may now be time to think of new ways to be seen in your market.
Do businesses really need Facebook? Let us know if your business has thrived outside of Social media.
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Solinda Nyamutumbu is a legal intern at Pure Business Law. She is an LLB Graduate from The University of West England as of July 2017 and began her LPC/MSc course at The University of Law (Bloomsbury) in September 2017 as a part-time student. She has greatly enjoyed the varied and in-depth commercial experience which she is gaining during her internship at Pure Business Law.
