Change was all anyone in the communications world could talk about last month. From changes we were hoping for; like maybe finally having a season called spring – to changes we weren’t hoping for such as Google and Facebook messing about with the algorithm. Algorithm changes at Facebook are rarely good news for those in marketing or communications, as these changes mostly make it more difficult to manage our brand pages and reach our audiences organically. However, this latest one may have some interesting opportunities for PR professionals and the media they pitch to.
An algorithm is nothing but a set of rules, and while the term “rules” usually implies something permanent, rules in social media are anything but. Facebook is famous for changing its rules all the time. Without warning and without apology.
This latest change at Facebook impacts once again how posts appear in a user’s news feed. Here’s what is going to happen:
If you regularly read news and updates from brand pages you follow, you’ll see more of them higher up in your news feed. If you care more about what your friends post than any of the brands you’ve liked, then that’s what will rise to the top for you. What you won’t see from those friends anymore is posts they have liked or commented on. Don’t have a lot of friends or follow a lot of brands? The ones that you do have, you may see repeatedly – with Facebook now allowing multiple posts from the same source appearing in a row.
This means the content produced by brands who run pages on Facebook will continue to be a pay for play space, with the additional downside that brand pages will no longer being able to entice organic reach (i.e. non-promoted posts) through their follower’s networks or friends of friends.
But, there’s a new game in town. The flip side of all this is that while brands have seen decreasing priority in newsfeeds over the last year, media publishers have seen their numbers rise. Key media outlets are now hugely dependent on the social network to distribute their content and get eyeballs on their stories.
So what do the recent changes mean for those publishers?
No one knows for sure, but the general consensus is one of two things will happen next: 1) Publishers will experience the plight of brands on Facebook – paying up to access the audience, or 2) publishers will go native and publish straight to Facebook.
What’s interesting to me is the emerging role for public relations professionals in the new social media publishing mix. Regardless of what happens next, media relations in its newest form is very much about social media.
If media publishers are now among some of the highest performing content on Facebook, and PR people craft and pitch stories to media, then PR people are going to play an increasing role in shaping the content consumed there. Media outlets will need good stories that not only meet the criteria of being news, but that also perform well on Facebook (and they’ll need a lot of them).
While PR agencies have successfully moved into the realm of community management and now have a firm foot in the paid social place – drafting engaging content on behalf of brands – it may be time to apply those learnings to the age-old tradition of pure play media relations. Winning PR professionals will be the ones who know how to craft a media pitch that works not only in the news, but in the news feed as well.
Jennifer Shah is a senior vice-president and digital practice lead at Fleishman Hillard Canada. She is responsible for strategic consultation and the hands-on integration of digital solutions for clients across Canada as well as serves as a senior member of the Fleishman Hillard International Digital Leadership Team.
