Facebook recently updated its EdgeRank algorithm, the complex calculation that determines how many people see your individual Facebook posts in their newsfeed.
EdgeRank Tracker is a free tool for measuring how your posts work with the algorithm. They measure Affinity, Weight, and Time Decay, the three variables that affect your post placement. Here’s more from the company: “Affinity is dependent on a user’s relationship with an object in the news feed. Weight is determined by the type of object, such as a photo/video/link/etc. The last variable is Time Decay, as an object gets older, the lower the value.”
Below, we adapted EdgeRank Tracker’s advice into four steps that writers can take to cope with these changes at Facebook. If you have any advice to add, share it in the comments.
Ways to Reach More Readers on Facebook
1. Write engaging and interactive posts. A Facebook advertising representative told EdgeRank Checker: “One of the key factors in our optimization is engagement: the amount of clicks, likes, comments, shares etc. generated by a piece of content.”
2. Improve engagement with the readers you already have. The Facebook rep said the algorithm analyzes “how engaging an individual post has been for other users who have seen it, and how engaged a user has historically been with other posts they’ve seen from that page.”
3. Don’t pester your readers or make them mad. The rep added: “Feed also takes negative feedback into account, which is the number of people who have hidden a post or reported it as spam.”
4. Don’t forget Facebook will promote your posts for a fee. If you really want to reach readers with an important post, you can pay Facebook to promote it.