Partner Article

How to beat Facebook EdgeRank changes

Kathryn Thompson provides her advice on how to beat the Facebook EdgeRank changes and increase your brand engagement.

There has been a lot of noise over the past few months about changes made to the Facebook Promoted Posts feature, which appears to have resulted in significant drops in traffic and engagement.

Social Media experts have surmised that in Facebook’s bid to monetise audiences and force brands to invest in promoted posts to engage with fans, they have made changes to the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm – the system that decides which stories appear in each users newsfeed based on a ‘popularity’ score according to each user’s interests.

EdgeRank is based on three major factors working together in perfect harmony:

Affinity

A Facebook fans relationship with your page.

It is measured by the number of likes and views, meaning the higher engagement someone has with your brand page, the higher their affinity score will be.

You cannot directly influence affinity – you can only focus on encouraging fans to interact with you.

Weight

The type of update it is.

Facebook want people to spend more time on Facebook, so higher scores are given to multimedia over simple text updates. In order of importance:

1. Videos
2. Photos
3. Links
4. Status

However, sharing a video every time you update a status is not a good idea!

Time

How recently the update was made.

The older the update the less chance of people seeing it as it’s considered less important. Most Facebook updated are seen within four hours.

It therefore goes without saying that in order to beat the Facebook Edgerank your status updates and engagement opportunities must be perfectly weighted in order to get the best possible EdgeRank Score.

Listening and engaging in dialogue with your audience (including customer service) falls naturally into this process.

It is a common misconception that the bigger your audience is, the more you’re ‘winning’ at social media. Unfortunately, unless that audience is engaging with you and seeing your content, you’re lagging behind the pack.

Getting an audience to engage is not quick or easy, but it is possible. There are some sure-fire ways to encourage interaction and engagement, which include:

• Use images – posts that feature images encourage 39% more interaction
• Keep it short & sweet - Facebook status updates of 80 characters or less receive interaction rates 27% higher than average
• Ask the audience – directly asking your audience to interact by filling in a blank, or adding a caption, increases comments by up to 9 times
• Timing is key – Post at optimum time to ensure your post is at the top of the newsfeed. Bit.ly data tells us that the best time to post is Wednesday at 3pm, but posting on Thursdays and Fridays shows engagement rates that are 18% higher than the rest of the week. Test various combinations of dates and times to find the optimum mix for your audience.
• Promoted Posts – if you’re trying to build an engaged audience using a competition or giveaway, then pay for promoted posts to boost EdgeRank in the run up to the comp. Your new audience will be primed and ready to participate.

The moral of this story is this: In order to beat EdgeRank changes you should be doing what all good companies and brands should be doing anyway. Posting and promoting interesting, relevant content that audiences will want to read about and be involved in.

Community is a word often overused in social-media circles, but fits the bill perfectly. By interacting and involving your audience, using a bit of technical data to support your decisions, you will soon be winning EdgeRank race.

This article was written by Kathryn Thompson, a freelance tech and gadget writer with a serious addiction to social networking sites. Kathryn enjoys nothing more than delving into the depths of Facebook facts and figures using her ultrabook with cinematic sound, to find meaningful data for brands and businesses.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kathryn Thompson .