Two recent announcements from Facebook, here and here, suggest that marketers will need to be more strategic than ever in order to reach their consumers.
Facebook has just simplified its Privacy Policy, cutting out nearly three quarters of the content in the previous policy, making it much easier for users to understand. There are no changes to the privacy terms, but there are now additional controls for targeted ads. For example, there is an option for users to stop Facebook and other companies from collecting data on their web activity, apps, and devices. Along with the recent Privacy Policy simplification came an interactive service called Privacy Basics, encouraging users to take control of their privacy settings.
Additionally, Facebook announced that beginning in January 2015, they will be reducing overly promotional posts in users’ News Feeds. Facebook said that pages that post overly promotional content can expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.
So what does all of this mean for marketers? Overdrive‘s Director of Social Media, Bob Cargill, had this to say about the recent changes:
“Good for Facebook. They seem to be making a concerted effort to reach out more proactively to people about not just their privacy settings on the channel, but how they can take control of which ads they’re served. Coupled with their other recent announcement about diminishing the reach of page posts that appear too promotional, clearly Facebook is looking out for its massive user base. This means marketers are going to have to be more strategic than ever in their use of Facebook in order for their content, both organic and paid, to be seen in the News Feed.”
The bottom line is that skilled content marketers will have a decided advantage over the competition on Facebook. Brands are going to have to put more time, thought and talent into their organic posts in order to be successful on this channel or else pay to promote them.
