However, if we look at Twitter, we see that it can be done differently. Twitter leaves the filtering completely up to the user himself with the help of hashtags and lists and also offers an overview of trending topics. I personally find it a pity that Facebook does not allow everything to pass through and filter it yourself. The result of EdgeRank now is that Facebook acquaintances with whom I do not speak much become invisible and only the 'good friends' remain. But how do you deal with this as a marketer?
1. Create more engagement and interaction
I myself continue to hammer on the age-old Facebook marketing mantra: create interaction! After all, this is good for the affinity with your fans. It results in a greater organic reach (earned media) of the content of your page.
According to Lars Backstrom (Facebook Engineering Manager australia mobile phone number list for News Feed Ranking), creating interaction is important for another reason. For example, Facebook first shows a message to a small part of your friends/fans. Only when many people interact with the message, the chance that the message will reach a larger audience increases. This means that interaction remains one of the most important factors to take into account.
2. Look beyond just likes, comments and shares
When creating engagement, many page admins focus blindly on just likes, comments and shares at the post level. This is also reflected in how page admins measure the results of their efforts with the well-known IPM+ formula.
However, more forms of interaction/engagement count these days. Lars Backstrom says that Facebook looks at how many people interact with a post before the social media platform shows the post to more people.
By this he also means measuring link clicks, photo views, video plays and other clicks (all forms of clicks other than the previous forms). In addition to these positive forms of engagement, negative feedback is also included. In order to determine which content scores the highest engagement, these factors should not be missing from your report.
3. Increase your affinity with sponsored posts
A clever trick to increase the affinity between your page and your fans is to boost posts that generate a lot of engagement/interaction. Thanks to Story Bumping (Facebook sometimes brings old missed posts back up) and Last Actor (Facebook also looks at the last 50 actions of each user to determine which posts appear in his/her news feed), this content strategy also has a positive effect on old and new posts.
At the same time, it is important to realize that organic reach (earned media) alone is not enough. The graph below shows the progression of organic reach from the beginning of 2012 until now.
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Increased competition on Facebook has resulted in lower organic reach for Pages. Source .
4. Your community is unique, treat it that way!
High-performing content on Facebook pages has been studied extensively. While these studies can provide good insight into what works and what doesn't in general, they are still averages that may not match your own results.
Don’t assume that videos and photos are the best choice by default, but try everything and see which posts got the most engagement. Use this information to determine what your Facebook fans find relevant.
5. Facebook marketing is more than just content
While publishing posts is the backbone of Facebook marketing, there are other ways for a brand to engage/interact with fans and increase your brand’s impact on Facebook. Think of organizing a social campaign such as a photo/video contest or other form of campaigns with Facebook Fanpage Apps .
A page visit also counts towards the affinity score, which is beneficial for the reach of your content.
Each page has its own Edgerank
Despite the fact that Facebook EdgeRank has now acquired a high 'blackbox' content, the challenge for brands on Facebook remains to create interaction and involvement. The brands that succeed best in this will also gain more visibility in 2014. These are probably the brands that do not use Facebook exclusively for sharing content, but also use the social media network as a campaign platform.
Page administrators should also realize that measuring interaction and engagement goes beyond just keeping track of the IPM+ score. In order not to lose contact with fans, more accurate measurements are needed. Moreover, each page builds its own unique EdgeRank, exceptions are increasingly becoming the rule.
Advertising, you can't avoid it
In addition, it is becoming increasingly difficult for everyone to reach the same number of people as before without an advertising budget. By freeing up an advertising budget for the best-scoring content, you kill two birds with one stone: you create more interaction/involvement and a larger organic reach.