Unique and shareable content is set to become even more important for brands using Facebook as a platform on which to communicate with customers. In a new post on its Newsroom blog, the world´s largest social network lays out how it is to crack down on posts it deems lacking creativity.
“People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content,” Facebook explained. With that, from January, users will see less commercially-driven posts in their News Feed, with an algorithm shift duly doing away with anything it deems overtly advertorial.
What will this mean for brands? Well, for many, if they still want to be in eyeshot of their target audience, they will have to change tact. No longer will content marketing strategies – successful ones, anyway – get away with comprising of posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app.
Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context will also be sidelined, as will brands that simply reuse the exact same content from their ads.
Facebook says it believes the shift will lead to an increase in the “relevance and quality of the overall stories – including Page posts – people see in their News Feeds”. Its message is clear, then: get creative or lose out.
Are you ready to take your content to new heights? Facebook´s regional director for the UK and Ireland, Steve Hatch, suggests many aren´t. “Advertisers are yet to get the creativity and science chemistry right,” he told delegates at the Festival of Marketing.
If you suspect that you could be one of the brands Hatch speaks of, please get in touch. We are a team of content generation specialists and would love to help.