02/01/2018

How Associations Can Respond to Facebook’s Changes

Its plan to de-emphasize brand pages will impact nonprofits

Facebook’s announcement earlier this month that it would start de-emphasizing the pages for brands and businesses has understandably thrown nonprofits for a loop.

In the future, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on January 11, “you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard—it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.” Pages still exist, and users can opt to make sure they appear in their personal news feeds. But the change will inevitably reduce the visibility of associations on the site, making it that much harder for them to promote membership, events, and news to their community.

“Lean too heavily on an external social network at your peril,” Associations Now's Ernie Smith wrote last week in response to the changes. “A couple of years ago, this point was underlined by the pivot to video. Now, it looks like it might be further underlined by the pivot away from news, fake or otherwise.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.