The most obvious goal of a Facebook business page is to drive up the profit margins of the company. Along the way posts can foster loyalty, build the brand, increase market share, inform and entertain. Originally Facebook began as a centralised website where people could connect with each other, but it didn’t take long before the social status (single, dating) of the person became the most important part of their profile.
Like all good ideas they generate momentum and so Facebook extended to include the general public and then companies. And so the options and complexity of Facebook pages grew. Now include Facebook’s news feed visibility editor known as EdgeRank and things really get interesting.
EdgeRank looks at your posts and gives them a rating or EdgeRank score. The higher the score the more likely that the post will appear in the news feeds of others and be seen.
EdgeRank is based on 3 variables:
Affinity – Facebook looks at the quality of the relationship between the brand and the individual which in turn is affected by the individuals past engagement with the brand, in other words the brand’s popularity with the individual.
Weight – The Weight of the post is the importance of the information that Facebook places on your posts, like images, links, etc.
Decay – This relates to the posts’ lifespan and the EdgeRank score for a post decreases over time. In other words make sure you post content regularly otherwise your score will go down fast.
Facebook is a social place after all so people want to see the content that they are interested in. Having EdgeRank filter the content on your page is a good thing as there is a lot of content generated by pages, apps and friends. No one wants to wade through masses of junk posts looking for the important stuff. You could be posting information that you think is relevant to your company, on a regular basis, thinking that you are doing a great job, but if no one is seeing your posts and engaging with them, your posts don’t have much clout.
If you don’t have time to analyse every post then here is a general guide for getting better results from posts:
Visual is King – Facebook is a visual medium after all and EdgeRank places higher weight on visual posts. Images grab more attention than text and the use of albums enhances this effect.
Videos – You can achieve great virality by using effective videos. Make sure that your videos are not too long or too big.
Write more text – You want to write enough text to cause the post to be truncated requiring the viewer to click on the read more link and engaging with the post.
Blogs – Post regular and interesting blog articles about your business and industry that people would like to read. Referral traffic to your website’s blog is also a fantastic lead generator.
Interactive posts – Getting more engagement from your followers through posts like competitions, questions, polls, etc.
Wildcard – Every now and again you need a wildcard thrown in the mix to grab your followers’ attention, as well as the attention of their friends. Wildcards that work well are memes, quotes by popular people, funny visuals, etc.
What type of posts work best for you? Tell us below.
Related Posts
Leave a reply