Facebook Is Optimizing Content Marketing; Offers Publishers New Tools

Viraj T

August 31, 2018

Facebook Is Empowering Publishers by Releasing New Tools to Measure Organic Content Performance

Facebook is testing new publishing tools with an exclusive group of publishers. The Social Media giant is allowing publishers to test variations of content elements to check which perform the best. These elements are-

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Facebook is allowing four versions of an organic copy to be tested by publishers followed by real-time insights on click-through rates. Five publishers, globally, have been selected by Facebook for testing.

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BuzzFeed, one of the publishers who is testing this tool confirms that the tool is excellent however, it may not be a game changer.

BuzzFeed news deputy director, Fran Berkman says “This comes as everyone’s traffic on Facebook has gone down a lot, so it’s good to be able to get the most out of our posts, but we’re still getting a lot less.”

Publishers will benefit if Facebook decides to roll-out these tools on a broader scale. Publisher engagement has been on the decline with Facebook due to the latter’s initiative to ‘clean-up’ their news feed. Facebook’s tools will optimize content to fit into their publishing guidelines.

One of the main reasons for Facebook’s ‘clean-up’ campaign was to eliminate clickbait advertising. Facebook initiated the campaign circa 2014 and has been aggressively trying to eliminate unsolicited content.

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Facebook’s News Feed integrity specialist Henry Silverman and engineer Lin Huang in a company blog post said “Publishers and other businesses that use engagement bait tactics in their posts should expect their reach on these posts to decrease. Meanwhile, Pages that repeatedly share engagement bait posts will see more significant drops in reach.”

Facebook commented by saying that it is too soon to confirm if the tests are truly working. However, Facebook wants to assist publishers to get great organic content on their platform.

Mollie Vandor, Product Manager at Facebook said “This tool is a way to maximize how they pitch their content to people on Facebook. Instead of us saying, ‘Here’s a list of universal best practices,’ we’re trying to give publishers the tools they can use to develop their own best practices. My hope is that this tool gives publishers a better sense of control and ability to make the best possible use of their investment in Facebook. Ideally, this tool is flexible, easy to use and is a value-add.”

Viraj T

Viraj has worked in diverse industries for a decade and brings in six years of Technical Writing experience to Martech Series. As a writer, Viraj has written on a plethora of subjects and styles that include Information Technology, BlockChain, Fiction et al. When not writing Viraj loves to binge-watch Hollywood movies and American TV shows, cook, go riding and most importantly play with his cats.