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Good morning internet fans. It’s Ryan Perry with Simple Biz Support. It is July 24th, therefore it’s Social Media Wednesday, and I have Sarah Giometti with Provaro Marketing on the other side. Good morning Sarah.

Sara Giometti: Good morning Ryan, how are you?

RP: I’m doing fabulous, thank you. Today, we’re going to talk about an algorithm change. However, it’s not Google related this time, who would have thought, it’s actually Facebook.

SG: It is. And for the record, it’s June 24th, not July 24th.

RP: Oh, darn it. I’m thinking ahead. I got plans to do.

SG: Clearly, clearly. Yeah, we’re talking about… Facebook announced, about a week and a half ago, a slight change to their algorithm and the reason we’re talking about it is to show how on the personal side it may be important as consumers, but how it won’t necessarily affect businesses. So, we want to make sure that you, our audience, understands what the change is and how it does not… It doesn’t need to affect your strategy.

RP: Right. And I think that’s important ’cause any time we hear of an algorithm change, typically it comes from Google and then it’s like thunderclouds move in, lightning comes down, locus move in, and it’s just all kinds of bad. This is a situation where it’s really not that bad. I guess this algorithm is really driven on the personal side, not the business side.

SG: Right. What they’re trying to do is determine… As you’re scrolling through your newsfeed, if you look at a post longer than you look at other posts then Facebook will deem it more important and move that type of content up your newsfeed. So it’s adding in another component where usually they’ve done it based on if you clicked on it, if you commented, liked it or shared, if you took some action. And so, this is kind of a passive, aggressive way of seeing what you like.

SG: And it will take into consideration slower internet speeds. Hopefully, it will take into consideration you left your newsfeed up and walked away for a couple of hours so they probably will have some sort of a limit, but… So it does, on the personal side, affect your newsfeed that it could… You’re helping train over time. On the business side, they don’t expect pages to see any broader reach or any changes in that. You might personally see it on your page, especially if you’re a local business with a smaller following you might see a little uptick just because your followers are interested in what you’re posting.

RP: Right, definitely. The nice thing is this is one of those changes that really doesn’t affect us. What we wanted to make sure was to let business people know, the viewers know that, yeah, you’ve probably been hearing about it, reading about it, but weren’t sure if it’s going to affect you. For most people, really not going to be that affect… You’re not going to be that affected.

RP: I think it’s probably going to be the large national players that might see some minimal effect. But I think the key thing is, is that they’re just… Facebook’s trying to be smarter at really driving information that you’re looking for as a personal user and I don’t think that should change anybody’s business model. You should… If you want visibility, the reality is you just need to pay for it these days through boosted post ads, and the great thing is it’s really not that expensive on Facebook in order to create a lot of visibility.

SG: Right. And there are a lot of options too on Facebook for creating visibility. Not… You can do just straight alone ads, you can do boosting your content. There is a… If you go into the ad campaign platform, there is at least a dozen choices. You can do custom audiences where you re-market to people once they visit your website, they go back to Facebook, they get served your ad. And we typically see that more from the bigger brands. I know I see it all the time because… On Amazon,

[chuckle] it’s the one that I get all the time.

RP: The old pixel trick.

SG: Yeah, pretty much, but just smarter. And it’s… The products I was looking at on Amazon are showing up in my… In the ads on my Facebook newsfeed ’cause I’m logged into both at the same time. But small businesses can do that too. And so, yeah, this algorithm change really is nothing to be worried about, you don’t need to change your strategy, keep doing what you’re doing and keep having good, reliable, interesting content that your followers want to interact with and read and participate in.

RP: Right. Okay. Well, hey, I think… Typically we run this for 15 minutes, we focus on one subject and that’s it. And this one I think is pretty clear cut dry. There really isn’t any change or effect, so if you are one of those business owners who is concerned about it, don’t be concerned about it, go on about your normal, daily routine, assuming that your normal daily routine is effective as far as marketing on Facebook goes. But I think we can call this one a wrap.

SG: Yeah, and it’s short and sweet, but to the point.

RP: Yep, perfect. Alright Sarah, we have something spectacular scheduled for next week. We would tell you right now, but we want to keep it a surprise. I’m really looking forward to talking with you next week about what it is that we’re going to be talking about.

SG: Right, it is spectacular. So you want to make sure that you tune in and find it out what we’re talking about next week.

RP: Alright, perfect. As always, Sarah, I appreciate your time and energy that you put into this. And for everybody out there that’s watching us, thank you very much and we’ll see you next week.