Dear Facebook Fans of 2018, (or is it Dear Fans of Facebook?),
As you may be aware, Facebook recently announced they are altering their newsfeed algorithm in an effort to return the platform to its founding roots. I think this is good. There is a bunch of clutter and a shit-ton of false news – I didn’t want to say Fake News, because, well, it’s too on the nose and I’m generally defiant of convention.
For you, the Facebook User of 2018, this means your feed, in theory, will be filled with timely, relevant posts from your most trusted source: your online friends – you know, the people who span anywhere from your uncle, brother, cousin’s first aunt twice removed to that rando stranger you met at a Dunkin Donuts one early morning last August, who then awkwardly friended you on FB two hours later, and you, even more awkwardly accepted that request, because, what if you run into each other again around town -yeah, those friends. You’ll be able to see more of their posts and things that they care about. Also, no, Facebook is not limiting your feed to 26 friends, despite what your mother told you.
You are the lucky ones.
In response to this announcement by my pal, Zuck – I call him Zuck in my pretend-friends circle – brand marketers everywhere are freaking out. “What is this going to do to our XYZ Business Page?” “How am I going to hit my per-post-impression goals?” “Is organic reach, dead?”, “Does this mean that no one will see my post about our new Cabbage Patch Doll Restoration Service?”
As someone who pretends to do marketing for a living, I can understand those questions, I even asked them, but then I quickly realized that 1) those are dumb questions, and 2) these algo changes are going to be a gift that the world will never talk about, but are actually, really wonderful.
It’s going to force brands to stop behaving like self-important jerks and start behaving like conscious minded entities who actually care about their customers, by creating content that is meaningful and falls into one of three categories: useful, entertaining, or inspiring.
Now, I would venture to guess that most of what we post isn’t necessarily inspiring to you, but we do try to aim for a happy balance of useful/entertaining combo, because that’s what we like, and we figured, like, 5 of you do too. In fact, if you are curious, here is how we try to make decisions about all things iron horse.
Anyhow, the real point of this particular post is, if you want/need/feel-obligated-because-you-know-someone-who-works-for-iron-horse to ensure you are seeing the irreverent banter we are posting, then you have a couple of options.
The first step is to do what this screenshot suggests. This way, you’ll get our awesome posts about how we’re killing off finger gun or where the st. paddy day half k in Boise is taking place, for example.
The second step is to comment and share posts that you find useful or funny or whatever is worthy of your time -in doing so, you’ll tell FB that you value them, which in turn impacts the top secret algorithm. It seems obvious, but the more you engage, the more the algo understands that you want to see irreverent beer content.
Of course, you don’t have to do anything we suggest, because, let’s be honest, the only reason any of us are REALLY on Facebook is to creep on our old high school friends.
How will we do things now? Pretty much the same as before, although you’ll probably notice a few more promoted posts so that you don’t miss out on “this really great beer release” or “we’ve become iron horse vapery”, etc We are committed to keeping things random, and ideally more useful than a dull swiss army knife in a snowball fight.
[ you’re welcome ]
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