Many businesses up to date with social media have themselves a fancy business page. Your business page may consist of a cool cover photo with a logo for a profile picture and albums with photos, work samples, employees, contact info and the like. But is all this information really getting through to your target market?
Facebook uses a fairly simple algorithm to determine what gets through onto the news feed or Edgerank as Facebook likes to call it. The news feed is called Edgerank because every piece of content is known as an “edge”. So pictures, videos and links are all an “edge” and all rank high compared to other edge content. But that’s not the only thing. A status with lots of likes or comments gets noticed for its “edge” and thus gets ranked appropriately.
The news feed algorithm is based on these three things: Affinity, Edge weight and Recency.
Affinity is basically interaction. The more you interact with someone, the more you see him or her pop up in your news feed. This is the same for a business. However, this is only one way. If you as a business creep on users that have liked your page it does not mean they will see your business posts more in their news feed.
Edge weight. This is essentially looking at all Facebook content and favoring certain items that are typically more interesting, cool, interactive etc. These items as listed previously are pictures, videos and links. BUT, every Facebook users edge weights are different so don’t just stick to those three or you may never reach a potential customer.
Recency is the third part of the equation. If it’s old it has a smaller chance of being seen in your target markets news feed. The newest content at the moment that the user is on Facebook is more likely to be viewed.
How does knowing this information help you be a more social media savy business?
Make sure to post relevant, target market appropriate content that will get your users to interact with you. That way you’ll start showing up in his or her feed more. Words like Where, When, Why and Would are all great for getting likes and comments.
Mix up your posts. Post videos, links, photos, status updates and anything your target market would find interesting. The more varied your posts are the more reach you have as a business.
Finally, post content at times when you think your target market is most likely to be online. That way your recently added content is smack in the middle of their news feed.
Staying on top of your social media marketing can be quite the feat, and Mystique would be happy to help!
Carolyn Jobse
Production Coordinator
Mystique Creative
