Dear Facebook,
You’ve changed.
The first shock to the system was the 2016 algorithm change when chronological order was thrown out the window. We were happily scrolling through our beautifully ordered content streams and then we wake up one morning and boom, the first post we are looking at is post from 5 days ago! Cue chaos. Our average reach dropped to 30% of your total follower count on average.
But we built a bridge and moved on from that.
And now it's like deja vu.
Here we go again, only this time it’s even less organic media content, more paid ads and less organic posts from brands we manage.
Although influencers get a booster chair, once again you’ve thrown them under the bus. You keep jerking us around and changing what you want. Your new goal is to help people “have more meaningful interactions”. You want to see less of our exciting brand content and more of what Joel from high school who I haven’t spoken to in 5 years does with his 3 cats. Apparently we are crowding your personal space. You think our content is passive and doesn’t create meaningful interactions. But what you don’t realise is that we only make content to connect with our community and their interests.
So what do we get out of it? A significant decrease in organic reach and another algorithm to figure out. Its seems that we have to throw money at you for our content to be seen. You’re too kind.
But maybe not all is lost.
You claim this is all in order to stop the spread of fake content. You’ve decided to show less business and media content, and more “people content” from individual users.
We understand your good intentions. You want to promote posts that encourage people to connect with the ones they care about, while discouraging posts that encourage only surface interactions – likes and shares but little real interaction.
So what do we do? Embrace and adapt. We have to create content that prompts conversation and comments. We have to make people stop and think, reflect and react, spark thought and conversation. Engage our readers opinion.
You’ve thrown us a challenge and we accept. We have learnt your game and we will play it.
Yours sincerely,
Haines Media
And after our emotional download, here’s how it will affect you:
Brands: Your organic content won’t spread as far in the Newsfeed, paid advertising become more valuable, language becomes integral in the filtering as a spam post
Influencers: Your brand relationships become more valuable as do your posts, for brands to organically connect with your audience and following.
Real people: Your feed will look different, less of the Buzzfeed clickbait, more of the status updates and family opinions.