Facebook Changing Its News Feed Algorithm Again

Just when you thought that Facebook couldn't get any worse in distributing your posts to your friends and followers News Feeds, it goes and changes its algorithm yet once again.

Right now your News Feed is determined by how much a post is liked, commented on, or shared.

The company will now measure how long that you look at posts, photos and comments in your feed to determine your interest in certain content as well. The thinking is that the more time you spend on a post, the more likely your friends will like to see it as well.

Of course, the main problem with its current algorithm is that it's cut down on the number of followers that you can reach with any one post. 5 years ago a post would be seen by all of your friends and followers. 2 years ago that was down to just 15%. This year it's around 2%.

Of course, you can still reach all of your friends and followers by promoting a post (meaning, paying for distribution), which is what Facebook really wants.

It's probably too early to tell whether this will be a positive or negative, but my bet is that for most artists, it will fall on the negative side. Of course, the best way around it is to post really compelling information that people spend a lot of time reading.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).

2 Tests To See If Your Site Is Affected By The Google Algorithm Update

Here's something that could be a big deal to those artists, bands, musicians, producers, managers, labels and just about anyone in the music business that has a website. Google now rates your site on how friendly it is when viewed on a mobile device.

The reason why this is important is mobile friendliness is now a big part of the algorithm that ranks your website during a search. That means that if you have an older site that didn't take this into consideration and doesn't look good on a phone or tablet, it's going to fall in the search engine rankings.

It's difficult to keep your site updated with timely information (which Google also looks at), but it's even more so to keep up with the latest technology. That said, if you haven't updated your site for a while (more than a year), it's not only time you do so, but it's important as well or it will be harder for your fans to find you.

How do you know if your site is mobile friendly? There are actually two quick tests.

1. Bring your website up in your browser, then grab the right side of your browser window and drag it all the way to the left until it won't shrink any more. If everything is a jumbled mess and you can't read it, it's probably not mobile friendly.

2. The second way is much better in that it comes from Google itself. Go to this test site and insert your site URL and click "Analyze." Google will then analyze it and tell you if it's mobile ready or not. If it's deemed not-ready, you'll not only be told why, but how to fix it as well.

The good thing is that sometimes the fix doesn't take much, but sometimes it does mean you need a total update in the case of a site built using older programming techniques.

Either way, do the test now so you can keep getting the most people to your site.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).