Social media marketing boils down to one principle: Adaptability.

Whether it’s adjusting strategy during a Twitter campaign or developing a strategy for an entirely new social platform, the online marketing landscape is constantly being reformed and reshaped.

There is no better microcosm of this constant change than Facebook, which has once again updated one of its key components with an overhauled News Feed. To sum up, there are 5 key differences from the current version:

• The News Ticker has been removed
• Consistency between desktops and mobile devices
• Ability to drill down into content-specific sub-feeds
• Larger photos with more immersive photo albums
• Extended preview text on shared links

What does this mean?

To find out what these changes might mean for brands, I asked several Online Marketing team members for their insight:

Daniel Hollerung, Search Marketing Manager

“With the announced changes, you can imagine that Bing will use this opportunity to display relevant information from Facebook friends when you conduct a search. It will likely have the same layout and design elements in the search results as it does on Facebook, unifying the look and design.

This will be another indication that universal search results coupled  with attractive visual features reach a larger audience and improve conversation whether you’re on the desktop, tablet or mobile platform.”

Cory Vandenberghe, Social Media Manager

“On a personal level I’ve noticed some of the best content in my current news feed comes from Instagram, so larger images will be a great addition. On a downside, I’ve noticed more meme’s and viral videos and those will also be amplified. If only more people knew about Tumblr.

On a professional level brands will have to put an even greater emphasis on creating compelling content, especially compelling visual content. The larger brands like Red Bull, Oreos, Dr. Pepper etc. will continue to create fun, creative, visual content. I’m concerned the smaller brands or businesses that currently struggle producing content, are going to fall even further behind. Their content will begin to stand out (negatively) like the Canadian Tuxedo at a Black Tie affair.”

Nate Knox, Search Marketer

“The announcement conveniently avoided addressing the impact on ads, but after seeing the news and reading preliminary thoughts from others, the main curve ball I see is going to be handling the segmentation. While there should be greater relevancy for advertisers to reach very niche audiences (e.g. Activision will be able to reach Gamers even more granularly when reaching the new segment in the newsfeed), reaching people in their own newsfeed will probably grow more competitive and expensive.

Sure, users will be able to see ‘only friend updates’ or updates from brands/companies in another section, but despite the newsfeed revamp, ads will obviously not exclusively go anywhere else as they are the primary source of revenue. Should Facebook be foolish enough to exclude ads from the friends only newsfeed section, advertisers will pull out quickly.”

Where do we go from here?

Until these changes go into effect for all Facebook users, brands and marketers should continue to operate as they always have. However, all of these changes seem to point towards the common thread of content quality.

Brands will now have much more visual real estate to work with, allowing for more creativity with the imagery or link previews. More creative visuals will in turn provide more reason for users to pay attention to brand content in the new content-specific feeds.

For better or worse, the new News Feed is inevitable. And although the overall consensus seems to be mostly positive, this still means that it is up to brand marketers to adapt to the latest Facebook overhaul.

What are your initial thoughts on the updated News Feed? Let us know in the comments below!