Facebook’s Popularity Meter – EdgeRank

First off, let me say that we don’t believe in social media to drive sales or traffic directly. Instead, we treat it as an indicator for trust and a signal for worthy content. We aren’t aiming to go viral, as engineering a true viral campaign is most often by accident. Monetizing a viral success is also difficult because it’s usually unexpected.With that being said, here’s what we do know about optimizing Facebook updates.

EdgeRank, Facebook’s algorithm, determines what posts you see on the news feed. It has 3 main components.

1. Affinity
2. Weight
3. Time Decay

Affinity means how many likes, comments, and shares a post receives. More interaction is an indication to Facebook that it’s a worthy post and should hang around longer. This also takes into account recent interaction with a particular user. If a user hasn’t interacted on a brand’s page in over a year, they won’t be as likely to see status updates from the brand.

Weight is determined by the type of content. Generally speaking, videos and photos are worth more than standard text or link share status updates.

Time Decay is exactly as the name suggests. The older the post, the less relevant it is.

DID YOU KNOW: Facebook Insights for Page owners gives impressions and interaction rates. Use this information to your advantage to figure out optimal post times.



It’s difficult to test EdgeRank without access to a large number of social accounts. So, we have to trust the big social analytics companies because we don’t have a large enough pool to test these things on our own. Usually places like Please Login or Register to see the link., Please Login or Register to see the link., and Please Login or Register to see the link. have access and the tools to scan thousands of Pages and thousands of posts.

For now, these BEST PRACTICES should guide you in the right direction:

Don’t try to sell on Facebook via Tabs.
Harris Interactive did a poll looking into e-commerce on social media. It turns out only 20% of people would purchase on Facebook. 55% are uncomfortable putting a credit card number on a social media site, and 74% won’t use the alternative “Facebook Credits” currency.

Cross-Promote with Other Pages
This technique just works. Univera, an anti-aging supplement company, recently did this with the barefoot experience shoe company, Vibram FiveFingers; offering a free pair of shoes to a random winner who shared a promotional status update that contained a picture (boosting weight). These types of promotions are against the Facebook terms of service so proceed with caution. If your competitor does it, join them or report them.

If you don’t have contact with a Page owner, you can like them via your Page and tag them in a post (unless they have it disabled because they aren’t social friendly). Chances are if it’s a small company wanting a social boost, they will cross promote because it helps both of you. An exception to the rule is if you find a tab on the Page you want to cross-promote with that says “Powered by Wildfire Social Media Marketing.” Wildfire basically has an exclusive arrangement to handle promotions on Facebook without breaking their terms of service.

Wednesday
As a general rule, Facebook has more Shares/Clicks on Wednesday. While no reasons are given as to why this is, we can speculate that people spend more time on weekends being actually social instead of internet social. This doesn’t mean only post on Wednesdays, just be aware that there is a slight increase of shares on this day. This trend is similar to preferring to post ads on Craigslist on the weekend, they just get more traction.

3 Hours
That’s the average lifespan of a post. Don’t post at 1AM expecting the early morning crew to see it and share it throughout the day. Post it at high traffic times for your niche. If your Fans get off work at 5, post it accordingly. Study this with post times.

Aim for comments, not Likes.
Comments are suggested to be 400% more powerful than Likes in the affinity score. Get these by asking a question or providing user interaction. For example, “Who has the best caption?” on a funny picture.

Estimating Click Traffic
The average is 3 clicks per Like. 15 clicks per comment. If you just post a link or a link and text, it’s probably going nowhere. Expect 100-200 impressions on a page with 3000 likes. The sad part is, those 100-200 impressions are impressions, not users. Competing on a day like Cyber Monday is tough… more on that in #7.

Grouping
If there’s a theme going on such as Valentines Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc., you can either choose to use that phrase in your update and be grouped in with 40 other people talking about it, or avoid it all together and aim for exposure that way.

Content Generation
If you don’t have content that’s worthy, then don’t post it. A brand like Mercedes can get away with a post like “we turned 125 years old today.” A music group can use “we launched our first album two years ago today.” But what can you do for your service? News in your niche? Sneak peaks of new products? Look for what works but don’t just have a RSS feed of your blog if you’re serious about using social media. Otherwise use it for back links.

Sales Copy
Use Facebook to test sales copy or the language and phrasing you use talking with your customers.

New Account
Create a new personal account, preferably a developer account (developers often create special accounts to test out Facebook apps). Add your new self as an administrator to the Facebook Page. If your account ever gets shut down, even accidentally, you must ensure access to your pages.

The Bottom line for using Social Media?
Customer service and reputation has to be priority number one.

Remember:

• If your goal is to grow, post pictures/videos with your content or contests.
• Expect a post to only last 3 hours.
• Only post content you think will get Likes and Shares so you stay connected with particular fans (affinity).
• Cross-promote with brands your visitors are on, even if they’re not directly related.
• Reward your regular interacting fans send them free stuff at random. That’s pretty much all a social giant like Buddy Media or Vitrue would do if you hired them.
• Don’t try to sell on a tab.
• Don’t put a CTA on every post. Ideally, 20% of posts should “sell.” Notice, “sell” in quotes. Announce a new offer or deal but don’t directly tell people to take action on a weekly basis. That works better on Twitter.