Major changes are afoot for Facebook, as founder Mark Zuckerberg released a statement last week outlining his future vision for the platform. Rocked by major scandals in recent years, Facebook is looking to move interactions between individuals to private, encrypted messages on its messenger app – similar to WhatsApp, which Facebook also owns. The planned changes are likely to take years to develop, such is the scale of the announcement, and mostly focus on improving privacy and security for its users. But obviously, such significant changes mean that businesses using and promoting themselves on Facebook will be affected too.
The exact new direction for business users was not revealed in depth in Zuckerberg’s statement, but includes more ways for consumers to organically interact with businesses, and new advertising tools for businesses to promote and sell their goods and services. Many companies use advertising in order to target posts to the right audience for them, but one of the upcoming differences is that private information such as location, age, sex, etc., will no longer be identifiable for Facebook advertising, so social media strategies around the world will have to be updated to ensure businesses are reaching relevant audiences.
Such a major shift in the way that people interact with the wider world on Facebook means lots of thought will have to be put in to make the tools work for business. It will take a few years to come to fruition and Indigo will be keeping a close eye on progress to ensure clients are updated on what the proposed changes mean for them.
