If you’ve heard a rumbling among Facebook admins lately, that sound is probably opposition to the latest Facebook EdgeRank update. Page Admins across the board have been reporting a decrease in reach since the change took effect on September 20,and they haven’t been quiet about it.
What’s the big deal about Facebook EdgeRank?
EdgeRank is an algorithm that ranks objects, like photos and links, in the Facebook News Feed. This means that Pages with a high score will be more likely to show up in your audience’s feed.
A Facebook advertising representative told EdgeRank Checker in an email that the latest update was made in an effort to optimize the News Feed to ensure the most relevant content reaches its users. This is accomplished by showing users the posts they are most likely to engage with, where engagement is defined as clicking, liking, commenting, or sharing posts.
So, posts that are more likely to be engaging tend to appear higher in the feed. The representative wrote that some “of the strongest factors that influence this are 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.” Feed also takes negative feedback into account, like hides and spam reports.
What does this mean for Facebook Page admins?
Well, in theory, the more engaging your content, the less of an impact this change should have on your page. However, EdgeRank Checker reported that the typical Facebook page in its data set experienced a 6.5% decrease in reach after the update and some page admins suggested they received a detrimental loss to their viral reach—as much as a 45% loss. Ouch.
The news isn’t all bad.
A blog post by PostRocket proffered that the algorithm change wasn’t a dirty trick by Mark Zuckerberg to get admins to spend even more cash on Sponsored Stories. In fact, it actually pushes pages to create more engaging content in order to improve the user experience. Also, don’t forget that EdgeRank changes actually happen at least once a week. Then why has everyone reported a drop in reach?
Well, they haven’t. PostRocket wrote that, “…most brand pages are awful—so obviously they will be part of the group that loses visibility.” Not to mention, more and more pages are paying for reach all the time, and this includes Promoted Posts. Facebook can only support so many impressions at once, unfortunately driving the sum of organic and viral reach down.
Content is still King.
Yep, engaging content is still the best answer to the so-called EdgeRank problem. Creating content that is going to engage your audience and motivate it to share, comment and like will still be rewarded by Facebook and drive your business. A few tips from a Kissmetrics post on the science of Facebook timing suggest posting no more than two to three times per day, creating posts that encourage interaction (question-based posts receive twice the interaction) and using words like “today” and “exclusive.”
Cement Marketing is a full-service, results-driven interactive marketing firm in Columbus, Ohio, serving clients worldwide. If you are interested in learning how Cement Marketing can help grow your company’s Facebook page, contact us at info@cementmarketing.com.