Facebook Just Introduced a Brand New Feature. Here’s What Entrepreneurs Need to Know

Facebook is incredibly important for marketers and entrepreneurs.

So when they introduce a major change, it's big news.

Recently, Facebook added a brand new feature, called the Explore Feed.

This acts as a kind of alternative to the main News Feed, helping users to find new content.

One of the key things about the Explore Feed is that people can look at content without leaving Facebook.

That's probably at least part of the company's reason for creating it.

Rather than linking to external sites, it will involve creating separate content specifically for Facebook.

Don't worry, it's not replacing the News Feed per se.

It's more like an extra way to find new content and new accounts to follow. So this could actually be a good thing.

In a recent post, Hubspot explains why the Explore Feed is nothing to panic over or worry about, as well as how brands can leverage it to reach more people.

But what does this mean for the marketers and brand managers who rely on Facebook to maintain a presence and grow awareness?

At this point, it appears that the Explore Feed is not replacing the News Feed, which will still be the main landing navigation for Facebook users.

And that makes sense — there would likely be quite an uproar from users who were suddenly flooded with content from brands they haven't actively followed, rather than their existing networks of friends, family, and followed brands.

Users have to voluntarily navigate themselves to the Explore Feed, which means that they have to actively choose to discover new content there.

How that will ultimately perform, we can't be sure.

But, according to my own scrolling experiment, it doesn't contain any paid ads or sponsored content — yet.

Which indicates that, like so much else in the realm of a social media feed, the Explore Feed is based on an algorithm that curates content based on what you've liked and shared in the past.

The Explore Feed provides an opportunity for users to discover your brand if they've liked or shared similar content in the past.

That presents an opportunity: If you're inspired or motivated by a certain brand or its audience, for example, you can use that to guide the content you create for Facebook with the goal of growing and attracting a similar audience.

The desktop rollout is in its earlier stages, so it's likely to evolve and undergo modifications as users adapt to it.

As always, we'll be keeping an eye on it.

So don't freak out too much. This new feature could actually present a great opportunity for marketers.

You can read more about Facebook's new Explore Feed in the full article from HubSpot.