Social media engagement is about to improve greatly with Facebook’s newest features – at least according to Facebook. According to Facebook, the redesign of the pages and profiles will help to increase reader and fan attention and allow businesses to improve client interaction.

What is new?

Previously, businesses were restricted on what posts they could comment on.
When the changes take place in July, conversations will become more manageable and allow pages and public figures to interact easier with their fans. The design involves indenting replies or what is called threading, similar to what one may find on typical blog commentary. This increases the readability of each comment and reply and allow a business to more easily differentiate between replies and new comments.Active-thread sifting is also being tested. This will arrange the most active conversations towards the top of the user’s feeds. This helps the average Facebook user to keep track of trending topics.  For a business, this will likely increase the odds that a business’ status will be seen, especially if it has a lot of activity.

Will Facebook’s new look increase social media engagement?

The million dollar question. The new sorting is expected to increase social media engagement for profiles that have over 10,000 followers. Pages will also be able to take advantage of algorithmic sorting. Personal accounts will not be affected by the changes. The changes also will not affect how the page or profile is viewed on mobile accounts, although I suspect this will change as the mobile user population continues to grow.

The Facebook replies sorting system works by displaying a small reply button next to the like button on each post. The algorithmic sorting, simply called Replies, will allow page owners to engage directly with individuals who comment on their posts. Other potential clients who visit the page will be able to view the most active conversations and jump into the conversation. This should improve the overall quality of the conversation and bring more meaning to the page’s posts.

The changes will appear differently based on individual connections of page viewers. The idea is that if a Facebook user sees that their friends are replying to a particular comment, it is likely to be relevant to the user. A high number of replies also effects how the comment is viewed. Comments marked as spam will show lower and lower on the feed, as not to bother page viewers and protecting posts from frequent spammers.  That means that value driven content will become even more important.

Why does Facebook care about social media engagement?

Remember that Facebook wants to make money. By increasing engagement, Facebook ensures that more people are staying on their website and thus seeing ads, clicking on ads and interacting with companies. Pages that focus on social media engagement have users that spend great amounts of time reading the page’s posts and comments.Facebook page owners will have to opt into the feature that enables Replies until it is implemented fully in July. Page owners will have other new options as well, including polling and Q&A options, which is just another added benefit for businesses who want to increase their social media engagement.  Like all Facebook changes, expect to see these opt-in features rolled out over the next several weeks.