(via http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-paid-no-taxes-2012-143520299.html)
If you are following social media, you’ve probably heard Facebook recently announced significant changes to the news feed. Launching on both desktop and mobile versions of the social network, this redesign is the first time in years a major overhaul has been done on this key feature.
The major changes will be:
Larger in-stream photos – The size of photos will be expanded within the news feed (see below). They will also have their caption superimposed onto them, pushing focus further toward the image itself.
Magazine-like look for links – Link posts have long been the worst performing type of post, in large part due to their unappealing visual nature. The new format will not completely overhaul them, but does give them a larger image, with a more of a magazine-like feel.
Videos increase in size, too – Videos had previously appeared as not much more than a thumbnail, hurting their chance at being seen. With the update, the videos will be increased in size, as well as overlaid with a play button.
Sidebar options squashed to the right – Currently, the left side of Facebook has your “Favorites,” “Pages,” and “Groups,” all listed out. The new Facebook news feed will be pushing these into a smaller, icon bar (see below) to allow for more photo space.
Segmented feeds – The biggest change of all: it allows users to choose what type of content they see; overall news feed, all or close friends, most recent, music, photos, games, pages, and more.
While there are some other small changes (see here), the ones above will most directly alter brand content strategy.
How Changes Will Effect Content Strategy
Increased focus on hi-res images – Definitely not a brain-buster, but the key here is hi-res images. Photos are almost always preferred to text, but if they don’t look clear, they won’t stack up against competing photo content. This also means brands will need to know the exact size of the new images, so images can be cropped accordingly.
Planning text with posts – With text overlaying photos, it will be important to use words wisely, so they do not run on top of important parts of the image, or vice versa, with the image making it difficult to read important text.
Create more videos – Videos, while receiving fairly strong engagement, had previously been downplayed due to their visual appearance. Now with increased real estate, videos will be a crucial component in your content strategy. They are able to tell the story photos and text cannot, which will make great content for promoted posts and sponsored stories.
Increase number of posts, with variety – As people can now segment what they read by type, posts will not clog in their feeds in the same way they used to when they went directly in a stream. Within one day, a photo and status post would not show up simultaneously in news feeds, thus allowing brands to get into multiple feeds with different messaging.
Know what time of day your fans are on Facebook – One of the new segments is “Most Recent.” If taken literally, supposing that it doesn’t use the same EdgeRank algorithm it currently does, brands will be able to reach fans they may not have been able to before. This makes it exponentially more important to know when fans are reading their feeds.
Sponsored Story ads with photos/videos will become more effective – With higher engagement and click rates, mobile ads had been more successful for Facebook, in part because photos appeared much larger within the feed than they could on desktops. With photos dominating the news feed, sponsored stories using photos and videos should see increased engagement and consumption. So, be sure to add these to your 2013 plan if they aren’t already.
