New Facebook Business Update – How this affects you?

Can you hear that?

That’s the sound of creative agencies everywhere gasping at the recent news that Mark Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook’s news feed more ‘meaningful’ and ‘personal’.

One of Facebook’s biggest “focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.”

This is the opening line in Mark’s latest monologue, posted on 11^th January, where he states that consumer research has led them to the realisation “that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other”.

With changes already underway as of last year, Mark has promised all Facebook users that within a few months’ time “you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups’ and seeing “less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media”.

Apparently, this research has resulted from various studies carried out, including that on mental health and social media, in which Mark states “when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being […] we can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long-term measures of happiness and health.”

So, how will you be affected?

The Creative Industry will undoubtedly be hit the hardest, due to many core services being the management of Social Media. Of course, we still have the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. But Facebook, as many will know, is key into retaining new customers and serves a great platform for consumer interactivity. With less and less engagement toward Facebook by the end of 2018, is this the beginning of the end for Facebook targeted ads? Or are prices going to seriously rise in order to pull your content through to your engaged audience? This will become increasingly limited over the next few months!

Although millions of pounds have been spent by companies since Facebook’s ‘target ads’ launched have begun, it seems there will be a massive drop in the amount being spent to garner consumer and business leads through this platform going forward.

Thinking ahead…

Bad news for some businesses and consumers who don’t mind receiving the odd advertisement now and again. Engagement between businesses and audiences will be reaching an eventual all-time low by the end of the year. Mark warns us that time spent on the platform and “some measures of engagement will go down.”

It’s time to get your experts to think ahead on ways in which B2C and B2B engagement can be driven elsewhere. Make sure your strategies for both yourselves and your clients consider this vital update. Facebook goes “from focusing on helping [consumers] find relevant content, to helping [them] have more meaningful social interactions.