This is a guest blog post by Cocooner Carly Rose of Carly Rose Virtual Business Management.

I attended a webinar hosted by Samantha English (Marketing Academy For Small Businesses) where she shared 7 Key Changes Coming to Facebook & Instagram and some of her top tips.

I have put together some highlights that you will hopefully find useful…

The 7 Key Changes

1. Algorithm update

User-driven news feed – users get to choose what their news feed:

• User can select up to 30 favourite pages/people
• Users can select “Most Recent Posts” chronologically
• Users can let FB decide: Algorithm ranked [what FB thinks you want to see]

You can manage your favourites in the preference section under settings. Here is a quick how-to video.

2. Users will now be told WHY they are seeing a post

The 3 dots at top of every post will now tell you why you are seeing a post and from here you can unfollow or snooze people or pages. 

3. Reach more than just your followers

FB will now offer page/group suggestion based on who your friends have interacted with.

4. Reach Consumers near you in real time

This is a great one if you sell or serve locally rather than solely online. When someone is geographically close to your location your posts may well pop up in their news feeds.

5. Changes to Groups

• Users regularly violating group rules will now get blocked from posting in ANY group for a period of time. 
• Groups will be demoted with recommendations if their quality rating is low [in regular violation of community standards]. You can check the Community Standards here: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/
• If you request to join a group that has had any violations you will get a pop up informing you of this so you can make an informed decision about whether the group is for you or not. 

6. LIKE button removed on all Pages

There will only be the option to Follow a page. The like button is being removed in order to stop any confusion.

7. Increased reliance on #

# are becoming increasingly popular on FB:

• Use these sparingly: 1 – 2 hashtags a post [absolutely no more than 10]
• Use at the end of the post and not in the middle
• Hashtagify.me is a good source to find trending #
• Use keywords relevant to your business or post
• Use popular # - #mondaymotivation, #throwbackthursday etc

USEFUL TIPS AND ADVICE

• Create inspiring, interesting content that users CHOOSE to share

• Engagement bait will lose reach on ALL your posts [not just ones asking for likes and shares] – FB does not like you asking people to like/share your posts!

• Do not push people to buy

• Don’t use outbound links, FB wants to keep people on the platform

• Respond to comments and messages within 24 hours

• Leverage low cost ads – FB is limiting ads for big companies so more there is space for small business advertising

• FB likes longer videos – 3 mins at least

• FB prefers posts with an image or video – text alone doesn’t do as well

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See the video above on how to manage your favourite Pages and people on Facebook since these changes.

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