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Page 1: 5 Things Every Brand Should Do Now to Prepare for the New Facebook News Feed

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Facebook announced a brand new look and feel for the site's News Feed yesterday;one that de-clutters the available space, works to give users easy access to thestories they f ind most interesting, and puts even greater emphasis on visuals such asimages and videos. Plenty of other blogs (not to mention Facebook's own) haveexplained all of the nitty gritty about the new design, so I'll not regurgitate that here.Instead, I'm going to highlight what the new News Feed means for brands andmarketers, and 5 ways that they must prepare their strategy as it rolls out over thecoming weeks.

Be Even More Visual

Page 2: 5 Things Every Brand Should Do Now to Prepare for the New Facebook News Feed

Any marketer will tell you that posts that include videos and photos receive moreengagement f rom fans on Facebook, and with the new design this message is evenmore important. To take advantage of the new News Feed design, Facebookencourages brands to optimize for high-resolution feed stories on both web andmobile by providing 600 X 600 pixel images (minimum 200 X 200 pixels).

Maintain (Or Increase) Posting Consistency

Page 3: 5 Things Every Brand Should Do Now to Prepare for the New Facebook News Feed

The new Facebook News Feed allows users to f ilter the stories they see by category,f rom Most Recent, to Friends-Only, to Photos, Games, and Following (the latter whichis similar to the current Pages feed) - that's all the brand pages and public f igures,including yours. When a user chooses the Following option, the stories will display ontheir News Feed in chronological order. With all that competition (not to mention thatyour posts can be completely f iltered out), it is imperative that you continue to postengaging and shareable content on your page on a regular basis, both to encouragefan interaction and to make sure that your content is near the top of a user'sFollowing feed when they look at it.

Analyse Your Cover and Profile Photos

As the above image shows, when a Facebook likes your page in the updated NewsFeed, the story that gets published to the News Feeds of their f riends features aportion of your page's cover image and your prof ile photo too. Their f riends alsohave the opportunity to like your page direct f rom the news feed, so make sure thatyour cover photo and prof ile image is as representative and compelling a ref lection of

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your brand as possible, to encourage more people to check you out.

Claim Your Facebook Places Page

This pointer applies most to businesses with physical locations. If you haven'talready claimed your Facebook Places page, now it is even more important to do sothan ever. When a user checks in at your location, the story that hits their f riends'News Feed features a map with your prof ile photo and business name pinned to it. Toboot, there are options to Like, Comment, and Share the status. Find out how toclaim your Facebook Places page here.

Share and Promote Your Best Content

It appears that Facebook is putting more emphasis on giving a spotlight to top-shared articles around the web. If you're not doing so already, now is a better timethan ever to use the social network as a way to promote your own content - blogposts, infographics, etc. - to try to bestow as much virality upon it as possible.

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Conclusion

It remains to be seen whether brands on Facebook will see a real benef it f rom theupdated News Feed, or if greater f iltering options for users means that content f romPages is pushed further to the sidelines. Either way, the best thing you can do rightnow is arm yourself with the knowledge you need to adapt, and start putting some ofthe information above into practice.


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