RYP Marketing

Whether you like them or not, Facebook changes are rolling out and they already have begun to impact the way businesses market and measure success on their pages. At the heart of the emerging social marketing shift is a movement away from number-focused marketing (getting “likes”) toward interaction-focused marketing. This is based on several new points:

• Users no longer have to “Like” a page to post comments or interact with it, therefore removing a major motivating factor for users to “Like” a page.
• The news feed now features a “Top Stories” and a “Recent Stories” section, with top stories accumulating only since the user was last on Facebook. Users have more control over what content shows up highest in their feed by “unmarking” items as Top Stories, so quality, relevant content is key.
• A news ticker shows real-time updates in each user’s home page of how others are interacting with Facebook. Users will see friends interacting with your page along with your updates, so it’s important to keep your followers interacting.
• Because page interaction is drawing so much focus, apps will become a larger component of business pages. Whether you include an app developed by your business or a third-party app (like a music player) on your page, remember that people will only interact with apps that are useful to them.

For more information on how the recent changes could affect your marketing strategy, I recommend this great article by Mashable: What Facebook Changes Mean to Marketers.