Make Facebook EdgeRank Work for Your Business
Facebook is a vital part of any business’ internet marketing strategy, but making the most of it requires an understanding of how the News Feed on the site works. Professional online marketers have known for a long time how to leverage a feature of Facebook pages called the EdgeRank to give posts on the site the longest active lifespan possible. The EdgeRank rating of a post determines how long it stays in the top stories in the News Feed and is calculated using a simple algorithm that the three main aspects of individual posts: affinity, weight and time decay1.
Creating Posts that Have an Affinity with Your Fans
The affinity of a post measures the relationship that the creator of the post has with the fan in whose News Feed the item is displayed. Put simply this means that the more interaction that you have with someone on Facebook the more regularly that your posts will appear in their News Feed. Obviously posts with a higher affinity rating with more people will have a longer lifespan in the top stories and be seen by more people. Because of changes made to Facebook in late 2011 there has been a 50% decline in impressions per post2 making the affinity that your post has with your fans a vital part of its effectiveness. Internet marketing is about creating and building relationships with customers and making posts on Facebook that encourage interaction is a practical strategy for increasing your page’s EdgeRank affinity ranking.
Giving Weight to Your Facebook Posts
There are many different forms that content can take in Facebook posts and they are all assigned different weights by EdgeRank to determine their value to readers. Generally videos and then images have the greatest weight, followed by links with status updates in text being given the least weight. In addition, the interactions that your fans have with your posts have different weights too and a comment is going to have more weight than a like. To make posts with the greatest possible weight it is best to embed a video or an image, preferably with a link and including a status update that encourages readers to leave a comment. Professional internet marketers produce Facebook posts that include all of these elements and link directly to the business website to funnel traffic to the company’s sales page.
Staying Ahead of the Time Decay to Keep Your Posts Fresh
The third aspect of the EdgeRank algorithm is the time decay and is simply a measure of how current your post is. More recent posts and comments have a higher time decay rank than older posts that have had less recent interactions. When the lifespan of Facebook posts was studied recently it was found that some had a lifespan of as long as 10 hours while others lasted a scant 15 minutes with the average being around three hours3. One important factor is the time that the post is made and obviously more people are going to read a post that is published in the early evening than one that is made at 3am but it is important to find out when your target audience is using Facebook and make the majority of posts to accommodate them. Doing this will not only reach your target audience more effectively but will give the post a greater EdgeRank time decay rating as your readers make comments and like the post.
Giving your Facebook posts the elements that they need to have a higher EdgeRank score will improve the longevity of your posts and keep your company’s message in the News Feed for longer but every post has to drop off eventually and so it is just as important to know what your posts’ lifespan is. If you are getting 5 or 6 hours of life out of your posts then you will want to make new posts three or four times a day to keep your page in the News Feed’s top stories so that none of your fans miss any of your messages.
Using Facebook to market your business online can take your company’s brand to a potentially huge audience and the key to being seen is to stay high up in the News Feed on your fan’s pages so making posts with a good EdgeRank score is an important part of a social network marketing campaign. Using a professional online marketing package that uses EdgeRank to maximize social network exposure is a cost effective way for businesses to reach as many customers as possible.
If you are looking to find a way to maximize your reach and exposure via Facebook for your business, call Brian Hong @ 504-717-4837 and learn how to turn Facebook into a lead generating machine. InfintechDesigns.com is a New Orleans based SEO, Social Media Marketing, & Web Design Firm. We specialize in search engine positioning, targeted traffic, and cost effective internet marketing plans for small to large businesses. Consultations are always FREE
References:
1. Facebook EdgeRank and GraphRank Explained
http://blog.involver.com/2011/10/25/facebook-edgerank-and-graphrank-explained/
2. Post Impressions June vs December 2011
http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2012/01/post-impressions-june-vs-dec-2011/
3. Post Lifetime: How Long Does a Facebook Post Live?
http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2012/01/post-lifetime-how-long-does-a-facebook-post-live/
