Artist page engagements biggest loser on Facebook algorithm
Hunger Games: Facebook news feed – especially for artist page engagements.
I’m not talking about a new movie where Jennifer Lawrence is part of social media circles that have to defeat each other behind keyboards; I’m talking about the changes made to FB news feed algorithms that were implemented in January which has all but nuked artist page engagements.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg altruistically decided that your news feed should be filled with posts from friends- not pages you like- in an effort to restore the news feed balance and improve mental health.
That’s all fine and well, although those most drastically impacted by these changes are the independent artists/labels/DJs etc. who can’t fork out money to pay for ads but rather rely on page ‘likes’ to increase their organic reach.
While marketers and brands knew they would ‘see less engagement,’ nobody anticipated just how much less, until now.
Buffer
Social media management company Buffer analysed over 43 million FB Page posts and 20 000 brands, leading to startling findings.
Overall they found that Page engagement has dropped by 50%, including a 70% decline for Artist Pages.
To counter the decline, many pages having been posting more times a day, however such a bombardment can also negatively affect traffic.
Interestingly, Artist Fan Group Pages have seen an increase in overall engagement, as if algorithms that pushed people to the Artist Page is now pushing them to the Fan Page…It’s a bit of a ‘face palm’ occurrence.
While the long-term effects of these changes are yet to be observed, it hasn’t kicked off with an encouraging start. The authors of the study offered the following insight:
“The best way to reach our audiences on Facebook is to study the data, experiment constantly, be open to learning, and take a growth mindset.”
Facebook may be changing, but remember, it’s in our nature to evolve too, so maybe artist page engagements is not the holy grail we once thought it was!
Sourced
