[Build Backlinks Online] New Study Shows Original Content Reaches More People on Facebook

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'New Study Shows Original Content
Reaches More People on Facebook'

Posted by Chad_WittmanThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to
the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
Facebook continues to make significant changes in the news feed. This time
Facebook has decreased the importance (technically the "weight") of status
updates. With these changes occurring so rapidly in the news feed, many brand
managers want to know how to stay on top of it all.


We dug deep into the data to see what the latest change was and wanted to
introduce a philosophy to stay ahead of the constant changes. We analyze and
monitor this type of data for thousands of Facebook pages with a tool called
EdgeRank Checker.


On Jan. 21, Facebook released a blog post explaining that status updates from
pages are less engaging than status updates from friends. In other words, status
updates were going to lose exposure in the news feed.


The change was implemented nearly immediately, as we saw organic reach begin
to dip rapidly. In the graph below, you'll see a ~40% decrease from the two
weeks after Jan. 21, as compared to the two weeks before:




While frustrating for many brands, status updates aren't displayed nearly as
often as links and photos, as they typically don't provide as much value to the
business. Status updates are typically used for gathering general opinions or
quick message updates, whereas links can drive actual traffic.


During this change, the other content types were not significantly impacted.
Most experienced a very moderate decrease, which is most likely due to normal
fluctuations. Interestingly, videos have now become the strongest performer in
the news feed. Our sample size for posts with videos is less than optimal, but
our historical data shows a similar pattern. For brands that have the capability
to deliver engaging videos, it should be considered as an interesting content
outlet in the future.



How does a brand stay ahead?

As we study each change in the news feed, a common theme begins to appear.
Content that creates value tends to bubble to the top. Google has a similar
approach with search results. We see Facebook slowly becoming similar to Google
in that capacity. When we examine the brands that are less impacted by negative
changes, they tend to have strong engagementâspecifically shares. Why is
this? We think we can explain this phenomenon with a concept called Content
Originator.

Content Originator

Brands that actually create the content (thus, Content Originators) are the
ones that experience the most value in the news feed. We've seen Google take a
similar approach with examining inbound links. Content Originators actually have
less to do with Facebook specifically, as compared to the maturation of any
social network. Twitter most likely experiences similar results, which you can
see as a Tweet propagates across the worldâthe Content Originator gets
more exposure.


The reason that Content Originators are able to succeed with an onslaught of
changes is that they are able to utilize natural distribution networks such as
shares. While Facebook's algorithms may not weigh their initial post as heavily
as before, strong engagement and shares are strong signals to distribute the
content further.


The news feed is filled with increasing competition that boasts larger and
larger budgets to gain exposure within the feed. Being a Content Originator
helps slice through the noise created by so many pages re-reporting news. The
re-reporting of news is something that Facebook is attempting to decrease
through these changes. It is also possible that brands will begin to gain
additional exposure through the "Trending" section if they're the Content
Originator of a new and trending topic.


In an example below, you can see the local value that Facebook provides in the
trending result. A story that was shared on Facebook 2,000+ times from
CarolinaLive (not quite a Content Originator, but as close as you can get in a
situation like this, as compared to a CNN-type news source) is given the extra
exposure. The next object listed is from Fox Carolina News, again more of a
Content Originator than the national brand of Fox News.




The example above is meant to illustrate how Facebook perceives Content
Originators elsewhere in their platform. We use things like this as clues to
better understand how the news feed works.

Conclusion

Facebook decreased organic reach of status updates by ~40% on Jan. 21. For
most brands, this doesn't have a large impact on their strategy, as they are
mostly using links and photos to further increase their brand. Using a concept
called Content Originator might help craft a content strategy that stays ahead
of news feed changes. Facebook may be placing additional value on content
originators in the news feed, and is surely valuing brands with strong
engagementâespecially ones with high share levels.

Methodology

We studied roughly 50,000 posts from 800 different pages for the two weeks
before and after Jan. 21. For most metrics, we examined the median of each
page's average performance over the time period analyzed. Engagement is defined
as likes + comments + shares for this study.
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