We constantly hear about Google searches and how search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary to get a page 1 listing on Google. SEO is now a dominant part of the online landscape with entire companies devoted to the manipulation of Google”™s highly secret ranking algorithm for their advantage (and their clients).
Although less publicized, Facebook also utilizes a ranking algorithm called EdgeRank. However, unlike Google, EdgeRank is not designed for searches. Instead, it determines what goes into a news feed. The higher the EdgeRank, the more likely the page will show up in the news feed (and vice versa). Think about it this way, if your posts are very engaging, your EdgeRank will be high.
Despite the highly proprietary and frequent changes to EdgeRank, its three main components are known and remain constant. These components consist of: affinity, weight and time.
Affinity is the amount of interaction between friends or a fan page. For example, if I regularly interact with a good friend, my affinity with my friend will be quite high. Conversely, if I have a Facebook friend who I haven”™t interacted with in months, my affinity will be quite low. The same holds true for fan pages. If I am constantly accessing a fan page, my affinity will likewise be high. (This is one reason why fan pages should constantly interact with their fans and provide new content.)
Weight refers to the category content type of the object, which can be a photo, status, link, video, comment or like. A photo has significantly more weight than text or any other object. This might be because it is easier and faster to view than a written post or more likely, because it usually triggers more interactions. This theory also explains why a comment has more weight than just a like – it too, triggers more interactions.
Time decay or recency is the final main factor. The older the object, the weaker its value or conversely, the more recent an object, the higher its value. This factor demonstrates Facebook”™s strong emphasis on new content.
According to the results of a recent Wildfireapp.com study, the most important category content type for engagement is photos followed by status, video and link.
Photo effectiveness can be further enhanced when accompanied by text longer than 141 characters. It is really interesting that Facebook made the decision to assign more EdgeRank to the longer messages that Twitter does not allow. This indicates the need to do separate postings for Twitter and Facebook whenever possible while taking into account the different lengths of allowable text (longer for Facebook, shorter for Twitter).
When you create a Facebook fan page, you can select from six verticals. If you select Brand or Product ”“ which is the most popular vertical ”“ for your fan page, engagement with photos is over seven times more powerful than status, the next highest content type. This means that when you create your posts, you should almost always include a photo. Pairing it with timely, relevant content of greater than 141 characters will greatly enhance engagement. In short, you will reach a much larger audience.
Facebook is frequently modifying its EdgeRank formula. However, by focusing on the three main components, you can greatly enhance EdgeRank and engagement.
Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is also a social media strategist and the designer of a new service, wwWebevents.com. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. He can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
