Three approaches your marketing team should consider:

Last week Facebook announced a radical design update to its core product, the News Feed. The move to a more visually enhanced design paradigm and a restructuring of the News Feed interface is impactful not only to the end users, but also to brands. We have outlined the areas where we think the News Feed changes will impact brands the most when marketing on the Facebook platform.

Understand what keeps your audience engaged to:

Make data driven decisions

The relevance of understanding and analyzing social data cannot be overlooked.  Systems like tracx, Attention’s social data platform, allow brands to mine their conversations and optimize content based on the results, in real time. Optimization of your Facebook content strategy must be informed by data analysis.

According to a recent study, only one in 200 brands on Facebook has an engagement rate over 2%. The updated News Feed will put even more pressure on brands to understand the rules of engagement.

Optimize your content

The updated News Feed design increases the allowable space brands have for displaying content.. Your brand is competing for space with content pushed from friends, applications and other brands. In order to gain and keep your users attention, you should provide compelling material that is sharable and engaging. With the updated news feed design, a “visual first “ approach to content strategy should be adopted not only through the use of static design assets, but also by incorporating rich media and video liberally throughout your brands feed.

Overcome Filters

Brands have relied on their content served to their fans’ News Feed in a frictionless manner, controls for filtering content were not intuitive or easy to access. The updated newsfeed has made filtering easier; with more options to customize you are the content you see. Users will be able to apply filters to display only photos, music, games, updates from pages you have liked, events, or close friends content. Advanced filtering will make it harder for brands to establish and maintain visibility.

Asking “Why would users Share” before publishing content is considerably more important, as brands will have a stronger dependency on user driven sharing to counteract advanced filtering enabled by users

The evolution of tabs

With a stronger emphasis on serving content through the News Feed it is inevitable that the role of custom tabs will change. Although Facebook’s media architecture still allows brands to drive traffic to tabs through ads, tab engagement is down 53% since Facebook timeline was rolled out. The inevitability of tab applications being deprecated seems obvious.

The rise of in-Feed apps

The development of “in-Feed Facebook applications”, where an entire application user experience exists within a widget shared on your news feed, provides a unique opportunity for brands. The ability to bring an application, be it a sweepstakes, user generated content program, or a promotional experience, to where your users already spend most of their time on the platform, is a compelling strategy that more brands should adopt.

Conclusion

Facebook’s changes to the News Feed can provide a huge opportunity for your brand, if your approach to content and customization is slightly modified.

To summarize:

-        Partner with a social media agency that uses social data to analyze your audience and provide insights that will inform your communication strategies

-        Embrace the “visual web” by incorporating high quality images and rich media within your content strategy

-        Asking “Why Share?” when developing your content matrix

-        Anticipate the extinction of tab applications and develop custom experiences optimized for the News Feed

Many current Facebook users won’t recognize the first iteration of “thefacebook” as it has undergone dramatic design changes since Zuckerberg and co. were at Harvard. While design and technology changes, the desire to share and socialize always remains.

Check out our homepage, share it with friends and get in touch with us and let us know what you think!

Also, head over to our Facebook timeline for the history of social media since and key moments that forever changed the way we communicate with each other online. 

Also, be sure to download our POV detailing Graph Search’s possible effects on brands and consumers alike:

Facebook Graph Search POV

Superstorm Sandy arrived Sunday October 28th and didn’t leave until the following Tuesday. During her stay she was able to black out Lower Manhattan, wound the transit system, destroy the shore and leave countless communities in shambles. Her presence is still being felt to this day as many are still on the road to recovery. Unfortunately, much of the attention and conversation has recently shifted away from Sandy.

Today, in conjunction with New York Cares, Attention is excited to announce the launch of “StepUP4Good“, a campaign aimed at reinvigorating volunteerism efforts and provide support to individuals and communities still in need. We also want to highlight the amazing work already being done and the incredible people behind it. Throughout the recent devastation, people have come together in record numbers to lend a hand to those in need. Follow along with us as we document the recovery efforts and find out how you too can #stepup4good:

Pinterest.com/stepup4good

Twitter.com/stepup4good

This holiday season, be at a loss for words, check out our holiday gif guide,  send a gif as a gift and gif all throughout the night…

Happy Holidays from everyone at Attention!

Check out some more photos of Attentionites working from home and other strange locations.

Our POV below details the specifics of the update and how it affects you and your brand.

You can download the full POV here