Videos responsible for decline in Facebook engagement?

Over a period of time, a lot has been said and written about Facebook’s decline in engagement. Now, a new study published by NewsWhip, an analytics company, reiterates that there has been a ’noticeable decline in engagement’ when it comes to media content over the past few months.

The study looked at likes, comments and shared articles from the top 10 publishers on Facebook in the past one year. The list included popular digital as well as traditional publishers. The results were a sharp decline in engagement, be it likes, which dropped by about 55 percent, Shares by 57 percent and comments by almost 64 percent.

The report blames it on the increase of focus on video content. In the bid to becoming a video platform, the non-video content produced by these leading publishers has been declining in engagement. But it isn’t just the push given to videos, the study adds that Facebook has also made some changes to its news feed algorithm that affects the appearance of media content and also whether it there’s engagement or not.

We had earlier discussed how ramping up original content generation could work in Facebook’s favour. After all, an engagement or a marriage announcement can get your entire list of friends to comment or like rather than a news/marketing feed which may or may not interest all. However, original content has also been sliding off a slippery slope. With this, one of its early products, News Feeds, is under threat. “Facebook set up a team in London to help develop a strategy to stop the double-digit decline in “original” sharing that happens on Facebook,” a report by TheInformation had earlier pointed out.

The study finally concludes that, “Paying attention to your internal analytics and experimentation is key in maintaining a strong connection with the audience.” Also, media consumers’ habits are changing and publishers will need to be aware of how their audience is finding news. Mass distribution in the news feed helps to reach the right readers, but takes effort and informed insight to make a proper impact.