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In recent months, Facebook has introduced a range of tools and additions to better position itself as the place to be for journalists and news makers – and by extension, news consumers. There was the introduction of “Instant Articles”, which encourages journalists to post content direct to Facebook by providing better publishing tools to improve the reading experience. Then Facebook updated their algorithm to factor in time spent reading, which, of course, benefits longer form content, giving journalists more incentive to post inside Facebook. More recently, Facebook opened up access to their new live streaming tool to journalists, urging them to post breaking news and content direct to Facebook and the 1.49 billion users of the website.
Facebook is very keen to have more journalists posting more news content on the site. And more exclusive material means more content for users to read, which means users stay on-platform for a longer amount of time. In line with this, Facebook has launched a new tool for journalists to help them discover trending content and information on the stories and issues resonating with the Facebook audience. And given that Facebook is one of the leading source of referral traffic for a great many sites, reaching that audience is increasingly critical.
Facebook’s new tool, “Signal”, is a dashboard which journalists can use to discover relevant content from across the Facebook network. This type of search functionality has traditionally been difficult to navigate on Facebook, as while you can use the “Trending Content” tab to find out what’s being posted about current topics on the platform, what’s displayed via Trending Content is specific to you, based on your historic actions and preferences. Signal’s listings provide a more general, unfiltered perspective on what’s popular, enabling users to find wider insights and trends.
These tools will help uncover more targeted and refined content, which journalists will then be able to use as reference material for their work. The use of location tags is particularly interesting, in a journalistic sense, as this will enable creators to find relevant content around news events and add that to their posts for context, quickly and easily. In the marketing world, when Signal is opened to more users, it could give
web marketing, social networking, advertising people and even the startup entrepreneurs and small businesses, the ability to look at how other businesses and individuals are discussing specific events and what’s resonating, helping to create better content.
