What the Recent Facebook Changes Mean for Vacation Rental Owners

Recently, Facebook made some of the biggest changes to its platform since 2014.  These changes will make a huge impact on how posts get included (or more importantly, DON’T get included) in the user’s Facebook news feed. 

These changes affect Vacation Rental Owner’s Facebook and Instagram Business Pages, as well as Group Pages.

Some of the first public admissions by Facebook about reduced organic reach:

As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like organic posts from businesses, brands and media.  And the public content you do see will be held to the same standard to encourage meaningful interactions.  Pages creating posts that people generally don’t interact or comment on will see the biggest decreases in reach. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

With billions of users online each month, Facebook cannot be ignored when it comes to marketing your vacation rental business.  Facebook users are utilizing social media more and more to make their travel plans.  

If you use Facebook as a way to market your vacation rental, it’s important that you are aware of these changes and how it will impact your post reach. 

If you aren’t using Facebook to market your business, you’re wasting a big opportunity to get more bookings.  Yes, even if you only list your property with an OTA, such as VRBO or AirBnb!  

Let’s dive in and see what these changes mean for your business.

Important Changes for Facebook Business Pages

Meaningful Social Interactions

Facebook will be using additional and more sophisticated algorithms to gauge post AND page interactions.  

Facebook is putting a focus on Meaningful Social Interactions (MSIs).  Post and page engagement are what determine MSIs.  Likes and shares are still important, but comments and time spent interacting with posts and pages are ranked higher on the MSI chart.

MSIs will be the factor for how much reach and to what audience your posts will be distributed.  Posts and pages with more MSIs will have a better reach and a wider audience.  

Vacation Rental Facebook Pages that generate Messenger chats; post shares to Messenger; Recommendations; streams of comments, replies and shares; engaging video; live video; and icon reaction engagement (i.e. love, sad, wow, ha ha icons) will rank higher with MSI.  Just a simple “like” isn’t going to be enough.

From the Facebook Help Menu:

What influences ranking?

Click-Gap Signal

What is a Click-Gap Signal?  Click-Gap Signal is a method of measuring the inbound and outbound link interactions of a website that is being linked to in a Facebook post or page. 

Posts or pages with a link to a website that has more traffic from Facebook than from any other internet source (i.e. Google), will be ranked lower.  Facebook sees that as a disproportionate share of clicks from their site, so it will rank the post as “low-quality content”.

Here is what Facebook said in their announcement:

Click-Gap looks for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on News Feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.”

Facebook Video Ranking Update

Facebook video continues to be a driver in the News Feed.  In 2019, Facebook plans to update the algorithms for video to include higher rankings when compared to text and image posts.

Original content is key.  It’s fine to share other page’s videos and to use a third-party video app; however, original video content and Facebook Live will likely outperform video from shares and apps.

Again, Facebook is looking for user interactions. Videos that are at least 1 minute in length are ranked higher than those that last only a few seconds.

In addition, Facebook is looking for content that creates repeat user experiences.  For example, creating a video series where users seek out the next video to watch will certainly boost reach and audience distribution.

According to Facebook, three factors impact video ranking: 1) loyalty and intent, 2) video and viewing durations and 3) originality.

The Recent Facebook Changes aren’t the End All for your Social Media Marketing

Although these recent Facebook Change could affect your vacation rental business page’s organic reach, there are ways to stay in the game.  Vacation rental owners will need to focus on getting potential guests and previous guests to interact with your Facebook Business Page and posts.

Owners will need to rely less on customers finding your business and rely MORE on you seeking out your customers in innovative ways.  

In the next post, I will discuss ideas for how to boost your Facebook metrics to ensure a smooth transition to these recent Facebook changes.  I can help you increase your organic reach, despite these changes, and keep your vacation rental business front and center with your potential and repeat guests.

Read Facebook’s Announcement about these changes here:

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/04/remove-reduce-inform-new-steps/