In upcoming Facebook algorithm changes, page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed.

Why is Facebook implementing this change?

Because our news feeds are INUNDATED with “click-baity” (is that a word?) posts from businesses, brands and pages I “liked” years ago that have since changed ownership and content messaging.

Figure 1

Can you tell I feel strongly about this topic? I know that personally, I’ve been avoiding Facebook because my entire news feed is filled with partisan “fake news” (see figure 1) and quotes that are actually videos designed to look like pictures (see figure 2) because videos perform better under the current algorithm.

Figure 2 

As an end user, I’m looking forward to seeing what this change truly means for our news feeds. For businesses and brands, this means they will need to rework their content strategy for Facebook.

Here’s what we can expect:

Engagement metrics will change, and most likely, go down

With all algorithm changes come metrics changes. Knowing the best ways to to measure the impact of your content, such as knowing your audience, will ensure metrics like engagement don’t drastically drop.

Content shared will need to promote meaningful interactions between brands and users

Zuckerberg makes it clear that using “engagement-bait” (Figure 3) to goad people into commenting on posts is not a meaningful interaction, and Facebook will demote these posts in News Feed. This means brands will need to reevaluate the their content strategy-what the content is, the mode in which it is shared, and how users will be able to interact with it.

Figure 3: via Facebook

Live streaming will become a vital part of social media strategy

About a year ago, Facebook tweaked its algorithm to show live video broadcasts higher up in people’s news feeds. Mark Zuckerberg states that he has “seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones,” and with this knowledge, it’s no secret live video will be integral to getting content disseminated to target audiences.

I’m a big fan of WordPress for 2 main reasons:

1. It is seriously user-friendly (especially for all the folks without a coding background like me)
2. It has great SEO functionality

When I started blogging on this platform, I had no prior experience creating my own website/blog. With the WordPress platform, I could pick a theme, customize it, and publish my first blog post within a relatively short amount of time. Coming to WordPress with a very basic amount of website management knowledge, I felt confident in navigating the platform with no previous ideas of what it was or how it worked.

Additionally, the SEO functionality of WordPress seems to be top notch. Although the SEO of this blog was never my main focus, WordPress has tons of SEO plugins that enable users to optimize content, meta tags, keyword focus, and more. Again, the usability of this SEO tools make WordPress a proven leader in content management systems.

Moving on to my biggest annoyance on WordPress —

the updates.

Updating my dog blog hosted on WordPress is the bane of my existence. -Barack Obama, probably.

Every great human/thing/platform has its fair share of problems. For WordPress, the never-ending updates always get me. I understand the need for updates on themes, plugins, etc., but I don’t understand how there are always so many so often. I hear there’s a plugin that allows you the ability to set updates to automatically update in the background, so maybe that’s worth a try.

In regards to the scalability of WordPress, I believe it can be utilized for both small blogs and large enterprises. Because WordPress is a very popular, open source platform, there’s a possibility it may be more vulnerable to security attacks. If an enterprise wants to use WordPress, just like with any other CMS, it must to take proper security precautions that ensures the security of their site.

Diversity makes us smarter — it fosters innovation and competition, it makes us creative and hard-working, and it forces us to look at things differently. With all of this in mind, it seems that encouraging  diversity should be a easy, right?

No, It’s really hard.

In the United States, the “melting-pot” of the world, white males own about 75% of full-power commercial TV stations. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 made it a whole lot easier for the biggest media companies to merge, and with giant mergers like NBC and Comcast, media ownership by females and minorities have significantly dwindled.

 Credit: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

For example, with a lack of restrictions that limit mergers and ownership limits, media groups can own upwards of thousands of radio stations. The U.S. is made of roughly 50% of females, and a disappointing 6.5 percent of females own full power commercial TV stations and FM radio stations. The numbers don’t match.

So how do we fix it? How can we encourage diversity in all aspects of media ownership? Here’s my thoughts:

• Start in the heart of the company. Hire diverse editors, executives, and employees, because all media begins through the lived experiences of those who share it.
• Encompass all aspects of diversity — going beyond race and gender and looking at economic, geographic and social backgrounds ensure true diversity.
• Enact government regulations. Nobody likes when the government steps in to regulate, but when mergers happen and and monopolies appear, we lose diversity and lack of choice for consumers.