Music Marketing Meets Story Bumping On Facebook’s New News Feed

Last week Facebook took a big step forward with a press conference detailing specific changes in how posts appear in the central stream of updates called the News Feed. However new approaches such as "Story Bumping" also dubbed "Re-bumping" and "Last Actor" suggest that those who have taken basic EdgeRank lessons to heart will be well-positioned for an increased emphasis on popular posts that encourage interaction.

According to Facebook watchers like All Things D and GigaOm, Facebook is trying to increase transparency around things like how their News Feed is filtered, showing some stories and hiding others.

With a press conference and a more limited blog post last week, Facebook opened the curtains just as Google now does on their search engine operations through figures like Matt Cutts.

Two big changes are especially important to those of you hoping that fans will see your Facebook posts about your music and related topics and spread the word.

Story Bumping aka Re-bumping

Story Bumping takes posts that are still popular and getting "lots of likes and comments" that viewers missed because they didn't scroll down far enough to see them and then reinserts them higher up in your feed so they get another chance.

In experiments to date, Story Bumping led to increased liking, commenting, sharing and reading on "organic stories" from both friends and Pages.

Last Actor

While Story Bumping emphasizes posts with which others interact, Last Actor emphasizes people and Pages whose posts you've interacted with. According to GigaOm:

"Last Actor (it has been rolled out already), tracks your last 50 interactions on the site, including likes and comments, and then bumps certain people up in relative importance in your feed if you’ve interacted with them more. So, if I like a certain friend’s post at 8 a.m., subsequent posts from her throughout the day are likely to be surfaced higher in my feed."

What These Approaches Mean for Music Marketing

For music marketing, Facebook's reveal supports a continued emphasis on EdgeRank basics such as creating content that is entertaining and engaging.

People are more likely to respond to:

Short, visual posts.

Simple calls to action such as questions to be answered in the comments or the request to share.

Regular posting when Facebook use is higher.

Your favorite music marketer should have more EdgeRank tips but the continued evolution of Facebook's News Feed raises an important question that I haven't seen answered.

Does duplicate posting of the same content and links lead to less exposure in the News Feed?

I've never seen a discussion of duplicate content on Facebook but how Facebook interprets reposting in one's own feed, as opposed to the positive feedback when others repost, would be really useful to know.

Increasingly, however, Facebook's changes seem similar to Google's. If you want to rank well you should always do what's best for your site visitor and for social media friends and followers.

More:

• New Strategies For Optimizing Your Facebook Posts
• 5 Tips To Increase Your Band's Reach On Facebook Despite Recent EdgeRank Changes
• Google's Changing SEO Policies and How To Optimize Your Music Site

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.