18 Nov Facebook Post Bundling: Should Your Brand React?
Last week in a Facebook Q&A session, Mark Zuckerberg and his team announced that the platform would be making changes to the Newsfeed designed to give users more control over the content they see there. Their goal is to provide a more comprehensive and timely “news” platform for users.
We’ve already seen the beginnings of these changes, such as the creation of clickable hashtags, prominent placement of trending topics on a desktop view, and bundling of posts associated with specific topics (that actually started in 2011). As part of this new direction, Facebook will also be bundling posts by Pages.
What does it mean to bundle posts on Facebook?
When multiple posts from the same Page, person or Group occur in a short space of time, Facebook will show the top 2-3 stories. Users will have the option to “see more” that will then reveal the remainder of the posts by that Page.
When will brand posts on Facebook be bundled?
While this will become clearer as time goes on, it appears that posts are only bundled when they occur very frequently (multiple times/day). We also know that Facebook has a history of phased rollout, so we may not see the effect of this new format for many months.
How will post bundling affect brand reach on Facebook?
It’s a signal Facebook is trying to consolidate brand/publisher posting. Due to the more spaced out Facebook content cadence that many brands follow, it’s unlikely typical consumer brands (with the exception of media companies and publishers who post many times a day) will be impacted immediately by this change.
However, this “test” from Facebook could eventually bundle content that is spread across multiple days. If this happens, it’s likely brands could see fewer impressions and clicks on each post because this bundling requires a user to choose to “see more,” in order to see all related posts. However, it’s too soon in the test to know if users will prefer this methodology and choose the option to “see more” posts often, which could result in more views for all posts that are bundled.
A potential positive? This change could result in more engagement with the content series because post cadence will be much more frequent and most posts will be around the same giveaway. This could make the program more visible and could help followers follow along with the promotion.
How should brands react to post bundling on Facebook?
This isn’t the first time newsfeed bundling has been announced by Facebook, so it may take some time to know whether it will roll out for all brands, how it will be executed, and exactly how it will impact newsfeed visibility and engagement. That said, the following are tactics your brand could implement in the meantime as more is determined.
- Continue producing high quality content that your networks want to engage with. As always, competition for the Newsfeed is being won by brands that are producing high quality content. This will not change, and should be the continued focus for your brands.
- When possible, consider high quality video content for your channel. In addition to these changes, Facebook has also stated that while the current platform is dominated by image sharing, in 5 years they hope that it will be dominated by video content. This may result in a greater emphasis on creating video content for brands as there’s potential that Facebook will prioritize this type of content in the future.
- Rely more heavily on discovery driving tactics, such as discussing a trending topic or newsworthy item. Knowing that Facebook’s overall vision for their platform is to become a customized news site for their users, it’s likely that they will choose to serve this content up more frequently to their users in hopes that they begin to feel that Facebook is their go-to for news.
- Keep an eye on when and how your content is being bundled and how that impacts your page reach and engagement. Consider running cadence tests to understand it more fully.
