Facebook has been facing downfall in its traffic ever since the company decided to change its algorithm. Twitter, on the other hand, became the new platform to share new content as news.
However, the social media platform also revised its strategy, which has weakened its position as it started to promote older tweets, overshadowing the new content.
Facebook decided to take advantage of the situation and is giving publishers the opportunity to roll out ‘breaking news’ feature. This will help draw more attention to the content.
The social media giant is also expanding to over 50 additional publishers in North America, Latin America, Europe and Australia. Publishers can use this feature once a day ( 1post per day) plus another five per month and set it to appear for 15 minutes to six hours.
TechCruch has added, The tag has no direct impact on a post’s News Feed ranking. It would make sense to show it more frequently while the tag is live and then less afterward, and Facebook says it’s considering some ranking consequence.
But just the visual cue has led to boosts in engagement, including a 4 percent lift in click-through rate, 7 percent lift in Likes, 4 percent lift in Comments and 11 percent lift in Shares. Publishers can see how their tagged posts did in a special analytics section.
“We’ve been pleased to collaborate with Facebook to elevate breaking news on their platform and are excited — but not surprised — to see readers respond the way they have,” said The Washington Post’s lead product manager Dave Merrell after testing the tag. “Delivering accurate information quickly has always been core to our mission, and in an overwhelming news cycle we want our readers to be able to easily identify when there’s new reporting.”
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