LANSING – If you’re an inbound marketer, you know that sinking feeling. You wake up, stretch, start your coffee, and check your phone—only for your stomach to drop at that horrible phrase “algorithm change.”

Depending on how long you’ve been in the game, you’ve ridden the ups and downs of the Facebook and Google algorithms as they throw constant wrenches into our carefully strategized content plans. Our friend Mark announced some changes last week, citing that one of Facebook’s major foci for 2018 is “making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.”

A disconnect between Facebook’s purported goals of bringing people together and users’ experience prompted Zuckerberg and Facebook to change. Facebook has been confronting and acknowledging criticisms lately, even to the point of blogging about how social media may be bad for your mental health (TLDR: passive consumption of social media is bad for your mental health, while active interaction with social media is actually good for your mental health). Another factor was feedback from user surveys suggested they felt that content from family and friends was getting drowned out by content from brands.

Now Facebook is planning to prioritize posts from family and friends over material from brands and businesses. Zuckerberg wants to curate an active experience for all users, encouraging personal connections and “meaningful interactions,” to maintain Facebook as a positive force for mental health and society.

To read the rest of this column from Lisa Smith, Owner, InVerve Marketing click on https://www.sbam.org/Resources/tabid/97/ArtMID/2980/ArticleID/3072/What-the-latest-Facebook-algorithm-change-means-and-what-to-do.aspx