{"id":89,"date":"2018-01-18T15:04:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T19:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/?p=89"},"modified":"2018-01-18T15:04:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T19:04:55","slug":"facebook-closer-together-what-does-it-mean-for-notre-dame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/2018\/01\/18\/facebook-closer-together-what-does-it-mean-for-notre-dame\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook \u201cCloser Together\u201d: What does it mean for Notre Dame?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Golden<\/a><\/p>\n

On January 11, Mark Zuckerberg took to his own Facebook account to announce<\/a> a major change to Facebook\u2019s News Feed, now called \u201cCloser Together\u201d by the company, with the intention to make sure \u201cthe time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Zuckerberg and Facebook, that means they want to increase the amount of content you\u2019ll see from your friends, family and groups in your News Feed and they\u2019re going to decrease the amount of content you see from businesses, brands and media on the platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

While all of this sounds like it could cut down on the amount of fake news, clickbait and overall dumb posts that we all see on Facebook it will also cut down on the reach of all of our posts from pages across the University.<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time that Facebook has tweaked its algorithm and we\u2019ve always managed to respond with a shift in the way we deliver content. In the past three years, we\u2019ve worked hard to build an engaged community by delivering very strong, well-designed written content in <\/span>links to articles from Strategic Content<\/span><\/a>, pivoting to compelling video that can help us tell our story (like <\/span>introducing Fr. Greg Boyle<\/span><\/a> as the 2017 Laetare Medal recipient), and posting on a consistent schedule with a consistent tone of voice on the University’s page \u2013 but this time feels different<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Organic reach on Facebook has been declining since 2011 with a more rapid decline happening since March 2014. Many of the 65 million pages on Facebook currently average 1 to 2 percent organic reach<\/a>. Many pages in higher education and publishing saw double digit declines in average organic reach in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this is the first time that Facebook has been so open about what their plans are for brands and publishers on the platform. While in the past the company has announced algorithm tweaks that they claim will focus on friends and family, or that they will diminish the reach of posts that utilize click baiting (\u201cTop Ten lists. You\u2019ll never BELIEVE what number 7 is\u201d<\/span> May 2017<\/span><\/a>) or engagement baiting (\u201cTag a friend who needs this!\u201d<\/span> December 2017<\/span><\/a>) tactics. But this is the first time that Mark Zuckerberg has posted to explain a fundamental shift in Facebook\u2019s future direction. He has said that he expects people will spend less time on the site and he is OK with that as it will be better serving the original goal of Facebook \u2013 to connect friends and family \u2013 and people will no longer be passively consuming videos or information.<\/span><\/p>\n

While it\u2019s always been true that Facebook\u2019s algorithm rewards content that people engage with, it will be even more important now \u2013 and the types of engagement now has a defined hierarchy:<\/span><\/p>\n

Likes < Reactions < Comments < Long Comments<\/b><\/p>\n

Anything that takes longer to do on a phone (56% of Facebook users ONLY log-in on a mobile device) is weighted more heavily than things that are simple. Liking is easy, but hovering over the like button and choosing “Love,” “Haha,” “Angry” or “Sad” is harder. Saying \u201cCongrats!\u201d is easy, but saying something in depth and beginning a conversation is harder. Facebook will be showing those posts that provoke a reaction or in-depth comment more than it will show posts that are just liked.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what does this mean for those of us here at Notre Dame? <\/b><\/h3>\n

The jury is still out as Facebook is rolling these changes out over the next few weeks, but it looks like it will have far reaching consequences for Facebook pages on campus especially for those accounts who are primarily trying to reach students there.<\/span><\/p>\n

We know that students (still) use Facebook but they are primarily passive users. They check in with friends and family, follow brands and pages that they find value in, and occasionally post photos to let their parents and extended family see what they are up to. They do not often actively engage with pages or brands \u2013 they don\u2019t comment, they don\u2019t like and they don\u2019t share. And more importantly, they won\u2019t be changing their engagement behavior on Facebook, no matter how much we\u2019d like them to so that our content will be served to as many people as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

That means that we\u2019re going to either need to find out new ways to present our content on Facebook to entice them to engage (something I\u2019ll be talking about in a subsequent blog post) or we\u2019re going to need to discuss new ways to try to reach students either on a different social platform, by consolidating individual Facebook pages into broader focused pages or by shifting to groups under one broader focused Facebook Page umbrella.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can tell you that the University of Notre Dame Facebook page is already seeing the effects of this News Feed change and has been for a few months. We\u2019re primarily experiencing a decline in the reach and views of static videos. Andrew Mosseri, Facebook\u2019s News Feed chief, has blatantly said that this is a direct result of Facebook\u2019s desire to deliver the most engaging content to users instead of passive experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cVideo by nature is very passive,\u201d Mosseri said in an interview with Wired Magazine. \u201cSo while you\u2019re watching a video on Facebook you don\u2019t tend to comment a lot, like a lot, or talk with your friends a lot, or read articles for that matter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll continue to blog about our experiences with Facebook as these news feed changes take hold in the market. Check in for a blog post on what we can do to promote engagement and try to combat this decline in organic reach soon. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 11, Mark Zuckerberg took to his own Facebook account to announce a major change to Facebook\u2019s News Feed, now called \u201cCloser Together\u201d by the company, with the intention to make sure \u201cthe time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.\u201d For Zuckerberg and Facebook, that means they want to increase the … Continue reading Facebook \u201cCloser Together\u201d: What does it mean for Notre Dame?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/ndstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}