From time to time most Facebook users will take a moment to wonder why a certain friend shows up on their news feed all of the time, or why it appears that so-and-so has fallen off the face of the earth. Well back in April Facebook revealed their secret tool and they have been refining it ever since… EdgeRank.
EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine who to show your posts to and when. You will notice on your the newsfeed of your Facebook page that there are 2 different feed types: Most Recent and Top News. Most Recent will show you posts in chronological order however the Top News (default setting) will show you posts based on the users EdgeRank score.
So, how do they determine a users EdgeRank score?
Everything published on Facebook is considered to be an object (status updates, links, photos, videos, questions…. everything!) and every object gets given an EdgeRank and depending on that ranking the object may or may not show on your feed. Some studies have even shown that an object with a low EdgeRank score may not even shown in your ‘Most Recent’ feed (so there is no guaranteeing that ‘at least people with Most Recent will see my posts’).
To determine the EdgeRank of each object Facebook considers three factors:
- Affinity – The relationship between the ‘poster’ and the user. Each time you (the user) visits a page, clicks a like button, comments on a status or looks at a picture etc, they increase their affinity score with the poster. This score is only one way so you can’t impact a users affinity score by visiting their page, it will only impact your score.
- Interaction – Each time you interact with another user your actions are given a rating. Each action is given a different weighting depending on the amount of effort or engagement the action requires, for example commenting on a photo receives a higher score than clicking a like button.
- Timeliness – When the post was created impacts if it will be shown or not, just like reading yesterday’s newspaper, it’s unlikely that someone will want to read a status that you posted last week as opposed to something posted today.
What do you need to do to get a higher EdgeRank score?
Interaction, Interaction, Interaction!- Use status updates to ask questions or opinions (i.e. What would you prefer for breakfast? Bacon and Eggs or Fresh fruit and yoghurt?)
- Create a ‘Question’ using the questions functionality based on a hot topic (i.e. Hot Topic: Where would you rather get married? and provide a combination of options)
- Post images and videos encouraging people to watch them or post comments, on their own video’s are great at getting people to interact
- Share links of posts and content from great resources and ask for the readers opinion
- Use status updates that ask the reader to ‘Click Like’ if they agree to something (i.e. Click Like if you think you need to take a holiday)
Use the Conversation Calendar you set up after reading the “Building your business with Facebook” blog post to review your posts and plan future posts that will help increase your EdgeRank. Follow the recommendations above and mix them up. Don’t forget you can still include the posts that you already have planned just refine them for interaction.
