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You have probably noticed that you don’t see posts from every one of your friends on Facebook consistently. While you might have 1,000 friends, you may only see updates from the same 25 of them every time you log into Facebook. And you may like 100 brands on Facebook, but only see updates for two or three regularly. Why does this happen? Behind the scenes of your feed, Facebook has a “magic” algorithm that determines what you get to see in your stream. Approximately 62-percent of users in one study had no idea that their Facebook feed was not everything that their friends posted. Huffington Post To make it even more confusing, Facebook updates that algorithm on a regular basis.

There is a lot of content that could be coming through your news feed, so it makes sense that there needs to be a way to curate what you will or will not see. An average of 1,500 stories are floating through the news feed of each user each day. Each user is seeing an average of about 100 of those stories per day, which are controlled by engagement algorithms. Forbes Only the highest quality content appears at the top.The only thing a user can do to signal to the algorithm that he or she cares about something is to either click on “Like” or to comment on it. The algorithm, by forcing user to “Like” something, is creating a signal to Facebook that you want to see more posts similar to the ones you have liked, commented on or shared. NPR

With this algorithm in place and its constant changes, the onus is on brands to keep up and constantly evolve with the changing environment. A business can never settle into a routine in Facebook posts; instead brands should be always be jockeying for a better position.

“Bribing” fans is not possible anymore: One of the most impactful changes for brands came in January when Facebook announced that “promotional” posts from brand pages would not be displayed in fans news feeds at all. This change greatly decreased the organic reach that brands could have on Facebook, essentially forcing them to advertise on the platform. Loyal followers that interact with a brand’s content continue to be served posts; however, that group is very small for most brands, and this change may decrease their odds of growing it at all. Because this was the only way users who didn’t already “like” a brand page could organically discover a brand’s content, second-hand referrals through likes or comments are marginalized. Facebook is primarily an advertising platform for brands, and they need to think of it as thus.

For those brands not ready to pay Facebook for reach, they can hope for the best and follow Facebook’s best practices guide for the optimal engagement.

The latest round of updates came in April when Facebook announced the following tweaks to the algorithm, according to Forbes:

  • There was once a rule that you would not see multiple posts from the same source in a row. But Facebook is now “relaxing” that rule. This will happen when your stream doesn’t have much content to show.
  • Content that is posted by the friends that you care about — which includes photos, videos, links and status updates — will be higher in the News Feed so that you are less likely to miss it. If you enjoy interacting with Facebook Pages that you have “liked,” then you will still see that content.
  • Many people have complained about seeing stories about their friends liking or commenting on a post so those stories will be placed lower in the News Feed or not at all.

These changes also impact whether a user will see a brand’s post, and it is much more likely that they won’t see it given the emphasis on direct posts from friends over other content. If you think having 10,000 fans is a victory, it is time to think again and start planning for optimizing your brand page.