Most Facebook page admins have a love-hate relationship with Mark Zuckerberg and his crew. We love getting thousands of eyeballs on our brand and hate it when they constantly switch up the game. If you’ve seen a downward shift in your Total Reach (namely, organic reach) in the past couple months, you know exactly what we’re talking about.
Facebook recently released an Edgerank update in an effort to push “high quality content” to the top of the Newsfeed. This change has left many admins worried about the fate of their pages and a corresponding dip in reach. To keep traffic pumping, Columbus social marketers and admins across the board will need to focus even more on visual content and learn to live and die by their analytics.
What’s going on?
Edgerank is the algorithm that governs the content found in the Newsfeed. It looks at all the elements connected to the user, like status updates and photos, in order to rank them and subsequently dictate the content users see in their Newsfeed. This creates an entirely unique Newsfeed for each user based on what Edgerank deems most important to them.
Facebook also measures how much your page and content are liked, shared, commented on and viewed. These statistics are based on organic reach (free distribution and people who share) and paid reach (paid distribution). Together, your Total Reach is measured by the total of your organic paid reach and organic reach.
In early December 2013, many admins noticed a significant drop in organic reach. Because Facebook has raised the bar over time, focusing more on quality content, many pages with less than stellar posts were left with a noticeable dip in organic and total reach.
The thing is, not all kinds of content were losing reach. Moz showed that some pages that posted mostly photos (as we know, photos account for 93 percent of the most engaging posts on Facebook) and rarely asked for engagement were well received, while also noticing a boost in organic reach. What happened? Facebook’s new algorithm pushed the highest quality content to the top of the Newsfeed, preferring well-structured links and visual content to text statuses.
As Facebook has grown, so has the competition for the top stop in the Newsfeed. Because Facebook was stealthy about unleashing the Edgerank update, many were left unaware of the big changes that were hidden underneath their company and product pages. In order to keep a handle on your page’s reach, you may want to consider a face-lift for your content.
How to stay on top of the Newsfeed game
The key to making sure that your content still has its chance to make its way in front of users’ is to understand what this algorithm update is looking for. The experts at Moz have a few suggestions on how to make sure your content maintains its organic reach:
- Focus on engaging your audience with questions and interesting photos. Make the conversation about them rather than your brand.
- Analyze and understand why your content is being viewed, liked or shared. Dive deep into your analytics.
- Try not to overuse calls to action by choosing one specific CTA.
- Use the most powerful and reputable sources for links, and be sure to analyze them first.
- Post more often.
- Post different kinds of content at different times of the day (news in the morning, product promos in the evening) and monitor engagement in your analytics.
Staying up to speed with Facebook’s changes can help you keep your audience engaged while making sure that your page is getting the most out the network’s rapid updates. If could use a hand with your Columbus social marketing contact us today to get started.