Are blue corners about to rule the online web? Time will tell. Facebook has given you the power to rank news feed items based on what you think is a top story.

Personally, I am a die-hard Redskins Fan so all skins stories are Top Stories in my world. Heck, if Popcorn at FedEx costs less on a Monday night game, I’ll blue mark that bad boy. It’s a Top Story.

Being serious, the new news feed updates Facebook has made destroys the #1 rule brands have used in the past to get exposure: Get engagement on updates to move up the news feed.

It doesn’t work anymore….

Now, users will only see chronological based stories in their feed if they are active on Facebook. This means, if an update has 30 comments and 15 likes, it doesn’t mean it’ll show higher than an update with no comments and no likes if if the later update was posted more recently.

The traditional strategy was to include a call to action in updates which raises engagement. Something like “Yes or No: Do you blah blah” to get comments or maybe “Click like if you were at blah blah blah” to get likes.

Then, this extra engagement would supercharge updates to the top of news feed which led to more engagement.

Now, the call to action is different. Fan Pages want users flagging updates as “Top Story” to insure new updates appear in the “See _ New Stories” bar when users log on.

Top 3 Updates to Get Fans Accepting Your Update as a “Top Story”:

1. “How did you find our Fan Page? If you’re enjoying our community, click the blue triangle in the upper left to keep getting sick awesome updates”

2. “Click the blue triangle in the upper left of this post and then comment what you enjoy most about Facebook!”

3. “We want to hear what content you’d like us to publish! Click the blue triangle in the upper left of this post then share your deepest, darkest desires with us!”

Just kidding. That’s spam-o-ramma. Seriously, just get back to providing value and building a great community. Click to see how crazy our Lujurians are?

Meet Nathan

Nathan Latka has supported the growth of over 100,000 small businesses using social media and data driven campaigns — all without a college degree.