Why You Can’t Escape that One Post in Your News Feed

Whether you’re trying to market your business on Facebook or you enjoy keeping an eye on your crazy friends from college, you might wonder why that silly video of a cat eating peanut butter keeps topping your news feed. Last week during the F8 Facebook Developer Conference, Facebook gave us a closer look at just how exactly they decide what your news feed will look like.

An important note that Facebook made clear was that all posts are technically still in your news feed. These data sources simply tell the platform whether to place a post at the top of your news feed or bury it way down beneath other posts Facebook that believes you’ll enjoy more. According to a Forbes recap article, Facebook announced three main sources of data they take into account when determining which posts outrank each other in your news feed.  Previously, Facebook only took into account the amount of activity on a post, such as likes, comments, and shares. In other words, the more attention a post received, the more likely you were to see it. However, while activity is certainly a factor, it is not the only one. In order to add a more humanistic element, the folks at Facebook added the following two elements to their consideration:

• The relationship you have with your Facebook friends and the types of interaction you have with them.

• The type of posts you typically engage with.

Instead of only looking at ways to determine which posts you do like, Facebook has also made efforts to determine which posts you don’t like. As a result of these efforts, you’ll likely see a decrease in baiting, fake, and promotional posts.

So if you’ve been wondering what that silly cat is doing in your news feed, there’s a good chance you indirectly told Facebook that silly cat videos were the types of posts you like to see. When you’re ready to optimize your business’ social media marketing presence, trust our social media specialists right here in Melbourne.