Understanding Facebook’s EdgeRank
If you are not familiar with Facebook’s EdgeRank system, you should be. EdgeRank is the difference between your business’s Facebook page posts (or stories) being viewed by your customers and/or potential customers, or not.
The average user has a potential of 1,500 stories to be displayed to them when they visit Facebook. Facebook knows that a user cannot read 1500 stories, so it uses their EdgeRank algorithm to determine which ones are the most relevant or interesting to the target user. There are numerous articles written on the subject on how the EdgeRank algorithm works, but for the most part, the more likes and comments your post gets the more likely it will be displayed to the user.
Affinity Score
This is of course an over simplification of the EdgeRank algorithm, but comments and likes do affect what is known as the “affinity score”. The affinity score is how closely connected a user is to your story. It weighs how closely connected the users that interact with your story are to each other to determine if the story is relevant to a particular user.
Your business is at a slight disadvantage here as it is likely the least connected to the target user then their friends and family are. However, if their friends and family interact with your post it will gain relevance from their interaction in the forms of likes and comments which affect the posts “edge weight” discussed next. This is why it is very important to create interesting content for your users to interact with.
Edge Weight
When a user performs an action they are creating an edge (hence the name EdgeRank). Each edge has a different default weight, which is unknown to us mere mortals, but it is fairly safe to say that comments outweigh likes. Thinking of creative ways for users to comment on your posts will have a positive effect on the distribution of your post. This is the reason why you often see random posts asking users to either like a story if they feel one way about it, or comment on a story if they feel another way. More than likely the default response would be to comment. I highly encourage you to think of genuine ways for your users to interact with your posts so they do not come off “spammy”. Again, good content trumps all.
Time Decay
As stories become old, they lose relevance and as such they lose edge rank. Combat this by posting regularly, however don’t post too often as your brand will likely come off as “spammy” and lose valuable readers. The folks over at socialbakers discovered, on average most top brands post about once a day. In this area, don’t become an over achiever. There is no perfect number, but we can formulate from socialbaker’s research “a rule of two”. Meaning less than two posts a week, but more then two posts a day will lose engagement with your audience, so shoot for something in between!
The Allure of Mystery
Sunflower WIFI is constantly looking for new and interesting ways to help businesses better engage their customers. The EdgeRank algorithm is shrouded in a fair amount of mystery. Anyone claiming they can formulate the EdgeRank score is most likely flat out lying, however certain determinations have been able to be made from it. Do you have more insight into the algorithm? Please leave a comment below if you have any advice on how businesses can better promote their stories!