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We have all seen it. The spam. Some junky Facebook page has made their way onto your news feed. They are probably promoting something ridiculous or something just as irrelevant to you. The best part is, they are not even discreet. In fact, they post in loud and clear, screaming I AM SPAM!
Lucky for us, Facebook knows that we don’t like spam. They understand that looking at the various digital storyboards in our news feeds is a highlight of logging into Facebook. It is there to show us things that we wouldn’t be interested in. For example, what your friends were up to last night or this morning, not a social media advertisement.
Obviously, Facebook has taken many steps to limit spam. At the advertising level, spam is closely tracked. At the account level, it is tracked too. However, when someone has liked a page, that page’s posts have flown under the radar, until now.
Facebook is further cracking down on posts by pages that have been liked by users. Although it sounds backwards, it is an effort to make sure we are seeing the social media content we want. Some of the content that will be filtered fall into the following areas:
- Posts pushing to directly sell, download or service
- Posts promoting contests without context or relevance
- Posts that are rewritten advertisements
As more companies promote themselves on Facebook, the space is becoming increasingly competitive. Brands can expect to see their organic reach via media mentions fall significantly in the future. For users, these new controls on promotional posts could be felt as early as January 2015.
As media becomes more crowded, it requires those in the industry to be more creative to capture and engage us, the users. Facebook understands that we have to be happy. So, they make it a little bit tougher for the brands while making our news feeds just a little more interesting.
Choosing Stories In News Feed
Facebook analyzes your activity to show stories that have a higher chance of interesting you. The main factors that are included are your Facebook behaviors and interactions. On top of that, the algorithm gives preference to post engagement, including how many likes, comments and shares it received. Hopefully, by choosing more relevant stories, your Facebook Newsfeed will be better than ever.
How To Change Newsfeed Preferences
You may want to change your Facebook newsfeed preferences to have it back to the old settings where posts were shown chronologically. If so, you are going to want to head to the arrow on the top right corner of your Facebook profile page from your Toughbooks laptop or mobile device. Then, select “News Feed Preferences“. If you want to see the latest newsfeed stories in chronological order, select “Most Recent“. Once you have saved the settings, you should start noticing the change.
As Facebook user, do you notice overly promotional posts? Are you happy about the additional security measures? When do you think social media companies are getting too strict? Please let us know in the comments below. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Image from http://www.simpartners.com/facebooks-redesigned-news-feed-what-does-it-mean-for-businesses/
