Following on from our post last week, in which we outlined how Facebook is conducting a trial in several countries that sees posts from Pages appear in a different News Feed – the Explore Feed – Facebook has released a new set of guidelines aimed at publishers which help explain how its News Feed algorithm works.
Accompanying the guidelines is a short 3-minute video by Facebook’s head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri, that explains how News Feed works in an easy to understand way:
While the video provides a fantastic overview, it is only a precursor to the News Feed Publisher Guidelines, which go into much more depth about what audiences respond to best and details important dos and don’ts for publishers.
A very interesting recommendation listed in the guidelines is that publishers should “post frequently”:
This goes against what most people have been taught when it comes to posting frequency. We often think less is more and that we should never spam our audiences, but here is Facebook basically saying “don’t worry too much about it”. The social network says that its algorithms prevent people from seeing too many of your posts and that you don’t need to worry about spamming your fans and followers.
While we don’t suggest you post a new update on your Facebook Page every hour, the recommendation should certainly be enough to belay any fears you might have about hitting the ‘publish’ button too often.
Perhaps the most significant tip from Facebook about posting is this: “It’s about creating great content you think your audience will find interesting”.
As we keep hearing, “content is king” and it seems Facebook thinks that too. After all, the social network’s primary goal is to provide a fantastic user experience and that starts by showing them content they might like.
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