How to Improve Facebook EdgeRank And Get More Facebook Traffic
So you’ve made a Facebook page for your business, added your logo and inserted your company’s contact information…now what?
This is the step where many businesses get stuck.
Yes, we know that Facebook is a low cost and quick way to reach thousands – the last statistics show Facebook has over 900 million active users. But how can you maximize the exposure of your Facebook content in order to engage your fans?
This article will answer the questions:
- What Is Facebook Edgerank?
- Why Does Edgerank Matter?
- How Can You Boost Your Edgerank?
- What Other Tips Can Help Maximize Your Facebook Exposure?
If you are new to Facebook we recommend that you first read these tips on SEO for Facebook which is full of advice on how to promote your Facebook page.
What’s Your Facebook EdgeRank?
Facebook uses the EdgeRank scoring system to determine how often your content appears in your fan’s news feed.
Showing up in your fan’s news feed is important because most of your fans will not actively visit your Facebook page on their own. This means you need to add content to their news feed to remind them about you and to engage them with your content.
Unfortunately not all of your content gets shown on all of your fan’s walls at all times.
The Facebook newsfeed is always changing as fresh content gets posted by other friends and businesses. In essence you are competing with each of your fan’s friends, pages and other objects to end up on their news feed at the right time, where you will be noticed.
This is where EdgeRank comes into play. EdgeRank is an algorithm that tries to predict what individual users will want to see in their newsfeed based on three factors:
- Affinity – Fans that interact with your brand on Facebook on a regular basis have a higher affinity towards you; Facebook takes this as a cue to show you in their news feed more often.
- Weight – Different objects shared on Facebook carry different weights of importance; the weights of objects such as photos, links and comments can differ on an individual level as well. A person who browses photos often may have a heavier weight for photos.
- Time Decay – After your content is shared it starts to lose value over time; old news is no news.
How to Improve Your Facebook EdgeRank
If your EdgeRank essentially controls how often your customers see your content in their Facebook newsfeed you need to use some strategies to make your EdgeRank as good as possible.
Try these strategies for increasing your Facebook EdgeRank:
- Engage your fans and get them to like, comment and share your posts in an effort to increase their Affinity towards you.
- Improve Affinity by interacting with fans on an individual basis. Affinity is only one-way (the fan must visit your content) but if you comment on individual fan’s pictures or status updates they may comment back, thus boosting Affinity.
- Use actions that carry a heavier Weight. Facebook doesn’t publish a list of how it views various actions but we can probably assume that comments, for example, carry a higher Weight than just a like because they require more effort and are more engaging. Many agree that videos, photos and links carry the heaviest Weight.
- For important announcements (sales or specials) use a heavy Weight object such as a picture to help improve the chances of appearing in news feeds.
- Try to actively engage users as Weights can accumulate. For example a post that gets 15 comments right away is more likely to appear in news feeds.
- Post content throughout the week as to replace older content; this fresher content is more likely to appear at the top of fan’s news feeds. However do not do this at the expense of becoming too noisy and risking annoying your fans!
- Try to post comments when your fans are most likely using Facebook to eliminate unnecessary time decay. One way to do this is to track the day and time of your posts along with impressions. Aim to post at the times that get the most impressions.
If your EdgeRank still doesn’t seem to improve, try overcoming the time decay factor by posting when others are not creating content. This reduces the number of people competing for spots in news feeds.
Maximize Your Business’ Facebook Exposure
Now that you know how to boost your EdgeRank here are some additional strategies to further increase your exposure on Facebook.
Geo-Target Your Facebook Posts
If it makes sense, try to geo-target your posts by city, state, province or country. If your content is specific to a particular area (for example only your Washington retail locations are having a sale) geo-target!
Keep Facebook Posts Short And Sweet
Generally, fewer words and short posts are best. This also stops you from becoming too self-promotional, which risks your fans “un-liking” you or thinking of your business as clutter in their news feed.
Pin and Highlight Important Facebook Posts
If you want to draw attention to specific posts on your wall you can use the Pin or Highlight option from the edit icon on the top right corner of the post:
Pin moves post to the top of your wall (select from pencil drop down menu).
Highlight expands your post to be stretch across your wall (star).
Stop Pesky Auto-Posting on Facebook
There are several apps you can use to automatically post to your Business page through Tumblr, Twitter and other social profiles. If you auto-post too often you run the risk of your audience getting annoyed and selecting to receive fewer updates from you.
Reaching Your End Goal
Activate User Engagement and Get Click-Throughs
For many businesses, Facebook is a way to lure fans to their latest blog post or a page on their website.
In order to engage your fans you need to appeal to their sense of curiosity. Lure them to click through with compelling titles.
For ideas of attractive titles that work check out the tabloid magazines the next time you are in line at the grocery store. Or head over to Yahoo and read a few of their headlines.
Both of these sources are great inspiration for sparking curiosity – it’s impossible not to pick up a tabloid magazine while waiting in line or to open up one Yahoo news story while checking your email.
Ultimately Have Fun with Edgerank and Build Your Brand
At the end of the day Facebook’s value for businesses lies in the ability of that business to engage their user and build their branding.
Don’t view Facebook as just another marketing tactic or a way to grow your SEO visibility. Your fans like you on Facebook because they want to hear from you, interact with you and share your products and services with their friends.
With this in mind, use Edgerank to your advantage and go forward and create engaging Facebook content that gets your brand noticed and your fans talking about you.
