Debunking the Myth: For Fans to see Posts they Must Add Your Brand to Interest Lists or you have to Pay for Promoted Posts.
What’s the Story? Over the past few weeks, you may have seen posts from brands on Facebook to the effect of “Facebook recently changed the way it determines what posts you see; if you want to keep receiving our updates, you need to add our page to an interest list” -- usually with step by step instructions on how to do this.
What’s the Truth? It is true that Facebook changed its algorithm recently. Just as social media itself is an ever-evolving entity, the way we interact with brands via social platforms continues to to change too. In the case of Facebook, similar to Google’s recent Panda and Penguin search engine updates, the world’s biggest social platform is now looking for organic, engaging content while determining who will see your brand’s posts.
Simply put, Facebook’s new algorithm called EdgeRank gives more value to photos, videos, & status updates made directly on Facebook (rather than through a third party system, such as HootSuite). Posting links is slightly less effective now: ultimately, the goal is to keep the user on Facebook rather than linking to another site. See more on Facebook’s Edgerank here.
But the purpose of this blog article isn’t to discredit Interest lists: they actually have a very useful purpose, just not what their assumed one is.
What is Interest Lists?
Facebook’s definition: Interest lists are an optional way to organize the content you're interested in on Facebook. You can create your own interest lists based on the things you care about, or subscribe to other people's lists. For example, you could create a Top Indie Bands list that features bands' Pages and public updates from band members.
When you create or subscribe to a list, you'll see the best posts from that list in your main news feed. Your lists will also appear in the Interests section of your bookmarks. Simply click the list's name to see all the recent posts and activity from the Pages and people featured in the list, without overwhelming your main news feed.
So what is their purpose then? As a user, I have an interest in internet marketing. There are brands out there, such as Mashable, that offer valuable information and resources that I can use in my job on a daily basis. So, in order to stay on top of all things Marketing I create an Interest List called Marketing and add Mashable along with several other pages to that list.
However, this doesn’t ensure that Mashable will always be in my Newsfeed as the above hypothetical brand assumed it would. Instead it created a sub-newsfeed within my main Newsfeed: on the left hand side of my home screen will be a link to click on that Marketing Interest List. When I do, it brings up another Newsfeed home screen -- one that will contain every update from Mashable and the other brands I assigned to this interest list.
So what’s the best way to be found in someone’s primary (non-Interest list) newsfeed?
Be engaging. EdgeRank is looking for content that users enjoy; make sure your posts are relevant to your audience. The better your updates are, the more likely users are to interact with them, increasing your viralness and ability to reach more users. Like we mentioned above, share photos, videos, organic “relevant posts” and tag others. The goal is to be social not “spammy”.
Interest Lists are just starting to catch on, but the beauty is that they can be shared with other users. So, if you develop a list that you think the other members of your sales team would find useful -- share it with them. As you add more pages to that interest list, all that you shared it with will see the new pages added to their list. If you want to subscribe to the NOW Marketing Group social media marketing interest list see it here.
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