Facebook made their huge announcement Thursday about a revamped and re-designed news feed.
It's been several years since a drastic change has been made to the news feed.
Sure Facebook added the Ticker about a year ago -- and added different ad space and sponsored stories. But this is a complete re-design!
For a quick look at what the new Facebook news feed will look like watch this short video from them:
I for one am really excited about these changes.
The vibrant photos and the various feeds will make our time spent on Facebook even better -- and probably longer -- which should get marketers and advertisers excited as well.
More time on Facebook means more ad exposure.
I wanted to share with you some initial reactions from some of the world's leading Facebook experts as the news spread this week. The reactions include both simple and detailed impressions -- as well as advice on how to take advantage of the changes.
John Haydon
1. Post better photos
The photos feed means that you need to post photos that are even more remarkable and relevant to your audience. This will allow you to stand out against other Pages who are also posting photos.2. Promote your best photos
Go to your Page Insights and filter your Page posts by photos and rank them by virality. Every couple of days promote one of your top ten photos to fans. This will give your top photos even more likes, comments and shares, which will in turn generate more organic viral reach (which is way better than paid reach).3. Make your Page beautiful
Whenever Facebook receives a new coat of paint, users tend to explore a lot more, giving your Page a fresh burst of new visitors in the short term. Make sure you upload a new cover photo, fill in gaps in your milestones, and weed out boring content. This will increase the likelihood that visitors will engage even more with your Page content.4. Be useful and present
Because users can now view all Pages they've ever liked in the "Following" feed, unlikes will spike in the short-term. Especially for Pages that boosted likes with fan-gate contests, but failed to be useful. Make sure that you publish content that is useful, and also work hard to create useful discussions within your posts by replying to commenters.
Mari Smith
YESSSSSSSS!!!! Best news for businesses about the new News Feed? There is a "Following" filter which will display ALL of the posts from PAGES you've liked and the public figures (PROFILES) you follow.
The biggest concern from a marketing standpoint is: Will our fans see more, or less, of our posts?! Will these "cool" new filters actually cause users to interact more with their friends and forget about pages they've liked? Will users' preferred feed become All Friends, thus ignoring page posts? Will users bother to visit the Following feed much at all? Will ads (Promoted Posts, Offers) be displayed in the All Friends stream.. or just the default News Feed? Plus, will the average user simply find the new News Feed too complex and use Facebook less? All this remains to be seen as Facebook begins the rollout, the tests, and the iterating.
IMHO, as with most of the Facebook changes, the key is to study the features from a technical standpoint, and then innovate from a relationship marketing standpoint insofar as how can you get "your" message/brand/content/offers in front of your target market in an organic, low-cost way?
Viv Craske
Love the new look Facebook feed!
Great news for users as it looks great and gives more choice, great news for marketers as newsfeed ads will be bigger, as well as images with weblinks and notifications that people have liked your page.
Viv also made a great video about it here.
Jon Loomer
Interesting! Bigger images, much more prominence. But also a bigger "Hide" button. This could be good since your ad budget won't be wasted on people who don't want to see your ad. But will be interesting to see how the expected Negative Feedback increase impacts visibility overall.
Jon goes the deepest in his coverage of the change (minus the bigger blogs like Mashable, AllFacebook and InsideFacebook). Below is a video rundown he made about the changes.
Amy Porterfield
I'm excited to experience the brand spankin' new News Feed.
Om Malik
Facebook has been stockpiling design talent like the U.S. used to stockpile nuclear weapons. And the result of all that design IQ is finally bearing fruit.
The new news feed is actually what Facebook says it is — clean, simple and beautiful. The white space (or gray space) is put to effective use. You can see the iOS and Apple influence on the redesign in small smallest of the elements such as menu items, icons and message status buttons.
They also get full marks for creating a unified experience (including the left hand navigation menu — which includes links to apps, messenger, events and what not) that spans elegantly across devices.
Danny Sullivan
Not only is it a new visually pleasing look, but it also has substantial changes to the amount of “rich” information shown about content.
Danny does an awesome job of breaking down the before and after in this article on Marketing Land.
Robert Scoble
I like the new changes to Facebook announced today.
Harrison Weber
Heavily influenced by mobile, the new Facebook News Feed is distinctly app-like. Working hand-in-hand with the search bar (a sleek change on its own), the visual hierarchy of the design points the user’s eyes directly to the middle column for viewing and sharing content.
Despite the fact that more functionality was added to Facebook’s already bursting feature-set, the new design feels surprisingly spacious. Content is easier to consume, meaning it will get more attention but possibly less clicks taking users off of Facebook.com. That’s both good and bad for third-parties.
Kim Garst
Loving what I am seeing around the new Facebook format! Get signed up for the new look!
Tony Bradley
Facebook appears to be following in the footsteps (or stepping on the toes) of the popular Flipboard app. Zuckerberg likened the updated layout to a “personalized newspaper." Facebook won't have the broad diversity of content that Flipboard offers, but the way the new layout segregates content will make it more inviting.
Hugh Briss
Hot Damn the new News Feed looks awesome. I want it now!
Pamela Vaughan
Facebook's design changes make it much easier for Facebook users to tune out content from businesses and brands.
Because this is the case, you need to give your fans even more incentive to check out their Following Feed to view your content so they can engage with it via Likes, comments, and shares, enabling you to show up in their friends' All Friends Feed. This makes it even more critical that you post content that is compelling and sharable.
Furthermore, the way Facebook is now surfacing top-shared articles sounds (to us, at least) like they're adopting a more LinkedIn Today-like method for featuring top content. This means it's in your best interest to use Facebook as a way to promote your more public-facing content -- like blog content, for instance -- to try to get your best content more viral reach.
Ravi Shukle
Expect to get a whole new experience on your Desktop / Tab & Mobile. Over all very happy with the layout and design.
Bianca Bosker
As Facebook tries to fend off user defection to sites like Pinterest and Instagram -- and confronts statistics suggesting 60 percent of adult users have, at some point, taken a break from the site -- it's traveling back in time to borrow from News Feed's initial incarnation, where friends got special treatment and their own place to be seen and heard.
Thomas Hawk
I think it’s the most significant improvement made to Facebook since Facebook started. If you’re a photographer, you especially will love it. Photos are bigger. Bigger photos have more impact. Bigger photos look better.
Overall the new design is clean and light and lovely. It feels very smooth and really nice. Photos really pop now that they are bigger. I’d give this redesign two thumbs up!
Sam Biddle
A shared link will spring onto the page with a bigger preview than we've ever had before, and consolidated comments from all the rest of your friends who've shared it too. This cuts way back on sharing sprawl, and hell, just looks pleasant.
This same consolidation will start to think for you, too -- the stories (and people) you've commented on and shared dirt about before will give Facebook juice to suggest stories to you, right in the feed.
This means Facebook will talk directly to you via News Feed, as opposed to it being purely a river of friend blurbs and advertisements. We'll have to see just how smart (and intrusive) these friendly reminders are.
Positive vibes
As you can see, the initial reaction is pretty dang positive.
The changes will definitely mean some new best practices for marketers -- and as it rolls out I'll try to help you out with that as much as I can.
The fact that Page posts will be in the new "Following" feed could be a bit tricky. Some people may never go to that feed but simply stay on their "Friend" feed.
But it looks like by default the "Most Recent' will be the news feed everyone sees when they login.
And yes the Edgerank algorithm will still be applied to most feeds.
Weigh in! What do you think about the changes? Sound off in the comments.
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