Facebook’s redesign: key marketing takeaways
Facebook has unveiled an overhaul of its News Feed feature letting users focus on specific brand stories with a host of new features as the social network faces pressure to maintain users.
The update was unveiled last night (March 7) at Facebook’s headquarters where CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed the overhaul was aimed at reducing clutter and increasing the relevance of content served to users.
Key points on Facebook’s News Feed update:
- The “Following” tab (above) allows brands and public figures to give their content more prominence. This feature lets users focus on specific areas of interest.
- Greater emphasis placed on visual content with Facebook reminding marketers and publishers to ensure images reflect the stories they want to tell to increase user engagement.
- For both organic and paid page like stories, the image that will be displayed in News Feed is the page’s cover photo.
- News Feed will have better integration with Facebook’s photo-sharing service Instagram.
See video below for a full guide through the Facebook News Feed updates.
“Newsfeed is one of the most important services that we build,” said Zuckerberg speaking at yesterday’s launch event. “It should have the best quality, personalised content that can let you drill into any topic that you want.”
The update will be rolled out over the coming weeks and is to be launched on both desktop and mobile versions of the social network.
Facebook is eager to roll out the new features amid reports that users are starting to lose interest in the social network in search of more niche services, especially younger users, with reports stating the social network’s user numbers dipped by 600,000 in the UK during December 2012.
