March2011 - Facebook changes its news feed. Understand what's been changed.

1. FACEBOOK NEWS FEED CHANGES
Current as at 1 March, 2011
Liable to change over time.
There’s no discussion about the importance of Facebook’s place in any web marketing strategy.
With its over 600 million worldwide users, Facebook Fan Pages are almost mandatory for marketers
wanting to increase awareness, understanding, positioning, acquisition and retention of its
consumers and customers.
People use status updates to share what’s on their minds, to tell others what they’re doing, and to
gather feedback from friends. However more important is exactly how Fans interact with Branded
Pages.
 About 85% of Consumers Fan Page interactions happen on the fan’s stream.
 In short if a branded page update doesn’t show up on user’s news feeds there’s no
impression, no interaction and no benefit.
 And that is the point of the biggest change of Facebook’s business.
For those people who like to get an unfiltered live stream of updates and news in their news feed,
there has always been the option of simply clicking “Recent News”.
However recent changes to the Facebook news feed system have added an extra option of filtering
this news based on the users level of interaction with the news source (Other Facebook users,
Facebook Pages, etc).
This option is on by default and is well hidden in the “Recent News” feed options.
Now, while it may be useful for some users or annoying for others, for communities and businesses
on Facebook it has quite a drastic effect.
HOW DOES THIS IMPACT YOUR PAGE?
All Facebook page fans that don’t interact with that page via “liking” updates, commenting or posting
on the wall will by default not see ANY status updates, links or images from that page in their news
feed.
This greatly impacts the “impressions” or viewing reach of a Facebook page’s updates, with some
pages already seeing up to a 30% decrease in impressions.
Remember the “awareness”, “position”, “Acquisition”, etc? It will NOT happen.

2. HOW SHOULD YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE MANAGEMENT ADAPT?
This change drastically increases the importance of having a healthy, active and communicative
Facebook community through quick direct communication to fans, engaging updates, and promoting
communication between fans.
The old nonsense competition for high Fan numbers without engagement is now seeing it’s end. A
large community is only worth the level of its wellness.
The solution is to create an atmosphere where your Facebook fans need to be a part of the dialogue.
Understanding the demographic of your page and making your updates and other content relevant
for all ensures your main demographic connects and responds to the incentives from you. This is
mandatory for your brand to stand out from over 2 million pages that exist on Facebook.
Highly active and conversational communities have always been a focus of The Online Circle, as we
anticipated it would be for Facebook personnel as well.