News Feed Optimization – the art of optimizing your Facebook content for the News Feed algorithm
Unless you strike it lucky with a truly viral post only a tiny percentage of your Facebook Page’s fans or followers see the content your Page churns out. This is due in part to sheer quantity of information vying for a place in the News Feed and also the filtering role that Facebook’s News Feed algorithm plays.
Utilising over 100,000 signals in deciding what to surface in News Feed, each piece of content is individually weighted with multiple and overlapping factors deciding what gets shown and to whom.
Everyone’s version of the News Feed is completely personal to the individual and with 2.4bn users that is no mean feat. Facebook makes minor tweaks to this complex algorithm very frequently, and major updates from time-to-time, not dissimilar to the way Google varies its PageRank algorithm that governs search results.
Facebook, like Google, is increasingly a pay-to-play platform with some 40% of business content now paid promotion. But as with Google, where the art of Search Engine Optimization has been long considered a prized skill highly-valued by businesses, people are beginning to learn the specific approaches and techniques needed to master the News Feed in a similar way. Connecting the right content with the right audiences to drive positive business outcomes. News Feed Optimization, if you will.
SEO or NFO?
Most organisations are aware of and invest heavily in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the process of getting traffic from the organic (free) search results on search engines.
So how about NFO as a definition of optimizing for the Facebook News Feed?
News Feed Optimization (NFO) is the art of getting maximum visibility for your Page’s Facebook content but without paying for promotion.
So NFO is the Facebook equivalent to being on the first page of Google or Bing without paying to advertise.
Going forward the majority of businesses operating Facebook Pages without the requisite skills will need to allocate ad budget to pay to get their message out there. The days of free and easy on Facebook are long gone.
As with Google AdWords vs SEO you have the choice to learn to optimize for News Feed or keep on paying to boost those posts.