Facebook brings more quality content to our newsfeeds

News has been announced that Facebook will be improving how it ranks news items. The changes will bring more breaking news to users’ newsfeeds by giving it a higher ranking in importance. This is great news. For a long time now Facebook users have been despairing of the trivial trash they are subjected to first in their news feeds. Increasing the quality of the content users see can only improve the service.

For business owners, this is another indication that the days of the sales pitch have gone. People really are looking for high quality information, breaking news, and new content – every time! So as a page owner, how will this change affect you? According to the update, the biggest changes will be seen by mobile Facebook users.

Facebook’s Varun Kacholia and Minwen Ji, both big names within the Facebook engineering team said in the blog article, “Today’s update to News Feed ranking recognizes that people want to see more relevant news and what their friends have to say about it…”

They also mentioned specifically the point about high quality content, not that we would ever say we told you so, but well, we told you so; High quality content is the only way to get ahead online today.

Kacholia and Ji said, “We’ve noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so we’re now paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile. What this means is that you may start to notice links to articles a little more often (particularly on mobile).”

The article goes on to acknowledge that some things will be given a lower ranking in importance – content containing memes, for example. We think this will go down very well with Facebook users. For too long, news feeds have been littered with the detritus of the meme universe.

This move is clearly all about improving content quality on Facebook, and raising the quality of the UX (user experience) too. Stories that are receiving a great deal of attention will be bumped up in the news feed rankings too.

If you are a page owner, the benefit is obvious, and simple to achieve. But here it is, just for you:

If you are sharing the top news items that are ranking high, and it is news relevant to your own brand or business, then you are boosting your content too! In addition, it means your own newsfeed will give you clues about the type of content, tone, and style that you should be posting. It will help you keep your finger on the pulse of what is really going on with quality content, and users’ comments.

The blog said, “After people read a story, they are unlikely to go back and find that story again to see what their friends were saying about it, and it wouldn’t bump up in news feed… With this update stories will occasionally resurface that have new comments from friends.”

We believe this presents page owners with another opportunity to post great content that will be spotted, and talked about. And that means it gives you another opportunity to engage with users too.