How Facebook’s changes will affect your Podcast
Mark Zuckerberg recently released a letter that will see big changes to the Facebook News Feed.
The main focus of the letter starts with:
“recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
And goes on to say:
“The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.
As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”
This has sent many marketers, business owners and pages into a worried spiral of different opinions; some calling it the end of Facebook for small businesses!
Michael Stelzner called this the “end of days” for marketers, Jon Loomer referred to the market “hysteria” this is creating, however Mark Schaefer says we shouldn’t panic! (References from Mark Schaefer’s blog post.)
So how should podcasters feel? Should we be worried about the changes, and how will it affect how we promote our shows?
The first thing to think about is how you currently promote your podcast… Do you have a Facebook Page, or do you use your personal profile?
The belief is that pages will be hit first, many of us have FB Pages setup for our podcasts and post episodes to those pages. It is fair to say that this tactic has not been the most effective of late, and insights / views of these posts have been dropping like flies throughout 2017 as the “algorithm” started to move towards the announcement we have just read. Zuckerberg confirmed that these changes had already begun:
“We started making changes in this direction last year, but it will take months for this new focus to make its way through all our products.”
As a matter of fact, Facebook formally announced in 2015 that it would begin penalizing business pages and reduce their organic reach. So this is a part of its continuing plan, and the announcement is the final move in completing this process.
So in a way I agree with Mr Schaefer; Don’t Panic! ?
You have probably started to make changes to the way you promote your podcast already…
We recently released a video about using video on Facebook to promote your podcast, and this has been successful for many as it a video on Facebook doesn’t direct people away from the social media platform. This means it often isn’t penalised and the algorithm allows organic reach to the post.
However with these updates that may not be enough:
“…passively reading articles or watching videos — even if they’re entertaining or informative — may not be as good.”
The “not as good” refers to not being as good for our wellbeing, as connecting with family and friends.
So let me be completely honest and give you my opinion on what won’t work for podcast promotion going forward, and what may work:
- There is no value in simply publishing content on Facebook!
- The only content that matters is the content that people engage with and share.
- Clickbait posts will be pushed off of our newsfeeds… For example: cheating the system with posts that ask for reactions as votes, will be penalised and won’t help.
- Facebook Pages will be the most difficult product to grow organically
What we think will work:
- If you are the host of the show or a personality on the podcast, using your personal profile to promote should be more effective.
- Honesty in posting… Don’t try to cheat the system.
- Most importantly…Create real, honest and engaging posts and you don’t need to worry.
HOWEVER…. You may be able to ignore all of the above!
We genuinely don’t know for sure as this is simply a letter from Zuck, and it is somewhat ambiguous in it’s wording.
What do you think? Over to you… Have you seen a decrease in posts from your page lately? Do you already promote and get lots of engagement? Worried or not?
Let me know in the comments below
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