Facebook isn’t having it anymore.
Titles like this one? They’re likely getting the ax soon.
Back in 2014, Facebook first announced that they would be cracking down on clickbait. Then again with another update this past August. Now, Facebook is back with an even bigger update.
The initial update to the News Feed algorithm helped the team identify Pages that regularly shared clickbait content or links to clickbait. These Pages would be penalized by having their overall organic reach limited.
With the new update, the screening gets more targeted. Each individual post will now be screened for clickbait and reach will be limited accordingly.
This means that publishers, brands, and marketers using Facebook Ads for their paid social strategy have to be really careful about how they promote their content and where they’re linking.
Here’s everything you need to know about what you should and shouldn’t post.
Giving the People What They Ask For
Facebook defines clickbait as “headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, or mislead people, forcing people to click to find out the answer.”
You know clickbait when you see it – “He opened the door and you won’t believe what happened next!” or “This routine saved her 100 hours of work and $12,000” – but most times your curiosity still gets the better of you.
You click through to find a short article that doesn’t quite address what you were anticipating. Below, you notice several more clickbait titles and you get sucked down the rabbit hole, looking for one article that will make it worth your while. Hours later, you forget what had originally piqued your curiosity.
The social media giant didn’t release these clickbait updates to give publishers a hard time or to push brands to invest in Facebook Ads.
Facebook decided to enforce more stringent rules around clickbait because it’s what users want.
“People tell us they don’t like stories that are misleading, sensational or spammy. That includes clickbait headlines that are designed to get attention and lure visitors into clicking on a link,” Facebook team members Annie Liu, Jordan Zhang, and Arun Babu wrote in a post on Facebook’s online newsroom.
Shock factor won’t break through the algorithm anymore. It’s not enough to just elicit a strong response from your audience. The content has to be relevant, helpful, and informative.
Consumers are getting smarter and more selective with the content they consume. As the digital ecosystem grows more crowded, consumers have more resources at their fingertips to research. They also have more to choose from than ever before.
With all that noise, trust plays a big part in making sure users come back time after time.
Almost half (43%) of customers say that they switch providers due to a lack of trust.
Facebook’s clickbait update is a play to win back users after an influx of fake news put a dent in the platform’s credibility as a content provider.
Natasha Lamb, Arjuna’s director of equity research and shareholder engagement recently spoke to the Financial Times about the repercussions of fake news on tech companies like Facebook. “The big risk to Facebook is a loss in user trust and people getting what has been coined ‘Facebook fatigue’ and turning away from the platform,” Lamb said.
The moral of the story is quality over quantity. Sensational news and flashy captions might drive a lot of traffic up front, but it will do more harm than good in the long run. Afterall, it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an old one.
Next time you’re about to post on Facebook, ask yourself these questions:
– What is the goal of the page/content I’m linking to?
– Who’s my target audience here?
– What are the top three topics/pieces that this audience has engaged most with in the past
– Is the headline I’m posting representative of what readers will glean from the article?
– Is the product description in the caption transparent and accurate?
Out of Sight, But Not Out of Mind
A second part of this newest update is that Facebook is asking users to stop sharing links directly in the caption of a post. Posts with links in the captions will be given less priority on the feed. Instead, the platform is encouraging users to share using the “link format.”
This places more emphasis on having images and text auto-populate from the page itself. This forces brands and publishers to be transparent, since readers can see exactly what kind of content they’ll be engaging with before they click through.
In order to keep consumers engaged, marketers will need to think more about aligning expectations and experiences. Is what you see really what you get?
Fighting against clickbait and fake news is only the first step in building transparency. To really build trust and loyalty, brands must take ownership of the whole customer experience.
Consumers are researching products on their phones while in the line at the store and before making a purchase on their desktop at home. They discover a brand on TV and hop on the Facebook Page two seconds later.
Marketers only own a small slice of the customer experience though, because most of the ecosystem is controlled by Facebook and two other major players: Apple and Google.
According to research from Comscore, consumers spend 80% of their time on three apps: Facebook, YouTube, and Facebook Messenger.
This means that Facebook likely has more insight into what makes your consumers tick and what turns them off.
Do you really know how your customers on Facebook get to your homepage? Which device do they browse from and which do they use to purchase? Which customers are bouncing? Without being able to measure these insights, you can’t improve them.
Putting your customers first is the foolproof way to weather any Facebook update – or any social update for that matter – that comes your way.
Because at the end of the day, social channels are held to the same rules. Whatever the community wants, the community gets. Engagement is the currency of the web.
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