Just when you thought you could maybe sometimes consider relying on Facebook’s complicated feed algorithm to possibly show your posts to 5% of your total fan base (if that), the company built by Mark Zuckerberg has once again announced changes to its feed formula that appears to make it harder than ever for musicians and those who promote music to reach their audience.
Earlier this week, Facebook made changes to how it ranks the content that appears in users news feeds. The big upgrade is an improved focus on content from “the friends you care about,” such as photos, videos, status updates or links. These posts will now appear higher in your feed, which means other posts – mainly those from Pages you like, such as bands and brands – will be given even less attention/exposure than before.
Here’s how Facebook explained the change and its impact on the reach of various Pages:
“…we anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to declinefor some Pages. The specific impact on your Page’s distribution and other metrics may vary depending on the composition of your audience. For example, if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through Page posts. We encourage Pages to post things that their audience are likely to share with their friends. ”
Now what am I supposed to do?
The hard truth of the matter is that Facebook is a massive online community that all brands and bands need to be a part of despite how difficult the company makes it for your content to be found by those who have selected to receive your news and updates. The best thing you can do to help increase reach is to try and create quality content that fans will want to share. This means videos, important news (tour dates/album releases) shared with eye-catching imagery, etc. Post the highest quality content you are able to create and ask your fans to share it if it somehow makes their day a bit better.
