Face­book Edger­ank - Re­mov­ing The Shroud Of Secrecy

If you run a Face­book page then you’ll want to be aware of every edge that can help en­sure your posts ap­pear in the News Feeds of your fans. This is es­pe­cially im­por­tant con­sid­er­ing that:

  1. In 2012 40% of all time spent on Face­book was on the News Feed fea­ture, and not on pro­files or pages, and
  2. 96% of Face­book users never re­turn to a Face­book Page again (if at all) once they have ‘liked’ the page, and
  3. Only 16% of your to­tal fan base will see Face­book posts made from your Face­book Page.

So, your time­line graphic and fancy Face­book Apps and Tabs won’t count for any­thing if you’re not a reg­u­lar pres­ence in the News Feed of your audience.

In or­der to make your Face­book mar­ket­ing ac­tiv­i­ties work for you and your Face­book page then you need to un­der­stand how the Face­book EdgeR­ank al­go­rithm works.

Un­der­stand­ing the Face­book EdgeR­ank Algorithm

Un­der­stand­ing the Face­book EdgeR­ank al­go­rithm could make a big dif­fer­ence to the range and reach of your posts (with­out hav­ing to pay for ad­di­tional promotion!)

The Face­book EdgeR­ank al­go­rithm may seem se­cre­tive and in­cred­i­bly com­plex, but when you break the al­go­rithm down it’s ac­tu­ally very easy to see what it is you need to do to boost the reach of your posts.

The Face­book EdgeR­ank al­go­rithm com­prises of three main elements:

  • Affin­ity – Affin­ity is a one way re­la­tion­ship mea­sure­ment of en­gage­ment be­tween your Face­book Page (the con­tent cre­ator) and the Face­book User (the reader). So, if the reader al­ready en­gages a lot with your posts they are more likely to see your posts in their News Feed
  • Weight – Dif­fer­ent types of posts carry dif­fer­ent weights. The more weight a post car­ries the higher the score is at the end of the cal­cu­la­tion. The higher the score, the more likely the post is to fea­ture on a reader’s News Feed.
  • Time De­cay – The gen­eral rule here is the older a post is the lower it’s score will be and the less likely it is to ap­pear in the News Feed. This is to en­sure that user’s who lo­gin to Face­book every­day are al­ways pre­sented with new content.

It is the weight el­e­ment of the al­go­rithm that of­ten causes the most con­fu­sion, as posts have a ‘start­ing weight’ and the level of in­ter­ac­tion per post can be classed as ‘ad­di­tional weight’.

The gen­eral rule of thumb for EdgeR­ank start­ing weight is:

  • Pho­tos and videos carry the high­est start­ing weight.
  • Next in line are posts that con­tain links.
  • Fi­nally, text only posts carry the low­est start­ing weight.

‘Ad­di­tional weight’ can be added to a post through:

  • Likes
  • Shares
  • Com­ments

The more pos­i­tive en­gage­ment that a post in­curs the more weight it car­ries, and the more likely it is to ap­pear in the News Feed of your fans.

Five Tips to Up Your EdgeRank

Here are five tips you can use to in­crease the reach of your Face­book posts:

  • Short and Sweet – Treat posts like tweets; keep them short and sweet (be­tween 100 to 250 char­ac­ters) and they will gain up to 60% more likes, shares and comments.

  • Use Vi­su­als – Photo al­bums, pho­tos and videos get be­tween 100 – 180% more en­gage­ment than links or text only posts.

  • Post Daily – Post con­tent on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to strengthen the re­la­tion­ships with your reg­u­lar read­ers, help­ing to in­crease your reach.

  • Rel­e­vant Con­tent – Make sure your con­tent is rel­e­vant to your reader, but don’t make it all about you.

  • Try Dif­fer­ent Times – Find what days and times work best for your posts and stick to post­ing con­tent around these key times.