With over a billion users spread across the globe, Facebook is increasingly becoming the “home page from home” for millions of people, who likely include your customers.
A Facebook user has an average of 234 friends and is connected to an average of 80 community pages, groups, and events. The 18-to-24 year-old Facebook user demographic is double this figure, as those users on average have a whopping 510 Facebook friends.
With this many connections, the newsfeed of Facebook users’ would lead to a mess of updates from the people and pages they are connected to if there were no mechanism for determining which page and friends’ activities appeared in their feed. This mechanism is EdgeRank.
The Basics of EdgeRank
EdgeRank is one of the most important ways Facebook sorts content in its users’ newsfeeds. EdgeRank ranks “Edges”; an Edge is anything anyone does on Facebook. It’s a generic term for a single piece of activity and it covers everything from liking a post to posting a status update to sharing a link. Every time you do something on Facebook you create an Edge. That Edge is then ranked according to three criteria: Affinity, Weight, and Recency (or Time Decay).
Affinity
The “Affinity of an Edge” is a measure of the relationship between a Facebook user and an Edge. As an example, if you post status updates to your Facebook business page and your fans regularly comment, share, or like on your posts — referred to as “the Edge,” they have high “Affinity” and are more likely to see updates from your page. Alternatively, fans with little or no interaction see less of your status updates due to their low Affinity score.
Importantly, Affinity is measured by frequency of your fans interaction with your business page and not the frequency of your interaction with your fans.
Weight
The “Weight of an Edge” measures the value of the Edge to the user. This “value” or weight is determined by the type of interaction made by the user with the Edge.
Although Facebook does not explicitly reveal the precise details of its weighting system, as a general rule posts with photos, videos, and links attract more Weight than plain text updates. Thus, incorporating objects with higher Weight scores into your posts generally increases the likelihood of your posts turning up in your fans’ newsfeed. And if your fans like, share, or comment, your page gains Affinity.
Time Decay or Recency
The “Time Decay” of an Edge measures its age.
Simply put, the older an Edge, the less likely it is to appear in users’ newsfeeds, as it is old news.
New Edges naturally perform better than older ones. However old updates or Edges that have a continuous stream of comments behave a little bit differently — their Time Decay is typically calculated on the basis of the timing of the last comment. This could be deemed a signal of the relevance of the information in the update.
When marketing your business on Facebook, it is important that your updates and marketing messages get delivered to your fans’ feeds. The ten tactics below will help improve your page’s reach.
1. Post Videos to Improve Weight
2. Improve Affinity by Short, Tweet-like Posts
3. Ask your Fans Questions
4. Improve Affinity with Visual Posts
5. Post Images with a Text Message to Increase Weight and Affinity
6. Post Frequently
7. Use Hashtags
8. Check your Insight Metrics
9. Post at Appropriate Times
10. Post at Times When your Competition Isn’t Posting
Summary
EdgeRank is increasingly important as Facebook both commercializes and attempts to retain its social model. EdgeRank is a metric of how much Facebook thinks your fans should care about your posts. Give them a reason to care. EdgeRank rewards interactions, but you can use it to figure out how to generate interactions too. Further more information please at
WebMarketing Today.
By Kunle Campbell
Repost by Acarre Community Media
A Facebook user has an average of 234 friends and is connected to an average of 80 community pages, groups, and events. The 18-to-24 year-old Facebook user demographic is double this figure, as those users on average have a whopping 510 Facebook friends.
With this many connections, the newsfeed of Facebook users’ would lead to a mess of updates from the people and pages they are connected to if there were no mechanism for determining which page and friends’ activities appeared in their feed. This mechanism is EdgeRank.
The Basics of EdgeRank
EdgeRank is one of the most important ways Facebook sorts content in its users’ newsfeeds. EdgeRank ranks “Edges”; an Edge is anything anyone does on Facebook. It’s a generic term for a single piece of activity and it covers everything from liking a post to posting a status update to sharing a link. Every time you do something on Facebook you create an Edge. That Edge is then ranked according to three criteria: Affinity, Weight, and Recency (or Time Decay).
Affinity
The “Affinity of an Edge” is a measure of the relationship between a Facebook user and an Edge. As an example, if you post status updates to your Facebook business page and your fans regularly comment, share, or like on your posts — referred to as “the Edge,” they have high “Affinity” and are more likely to see updates from your page. Alternatively, fans with little or no interaction see less of your status updates due to their low Affinity score.
Importantly, Affinity is measured by frequency of your fans interaction with your business page and not the frequency of your interaction with your fans.
Weight
The “Weight of an Edge” measures the value of the Edge to the user. This “value” or weight is determined by the type of interaction made by the user with the Edge.
Although Facebook does not explicitly reveal the precise details of its weighting system, as a general rule posts with photos, videos, and links attract more Weight than plain text updates. Thus, incorporating objects with higher Weight scores into your posts generally increases the likelihood of your posts turning up in your fans’ newsfeed. And if your fans like, share, or comment, your page gains Affinity.
Time Decay or Recency
The “Time Decay” of an Edge measures its age.
Simply put, the older an Edge, the less likely it is to appear in users’ newsfeeds, as it is old news.
New Edges naturally perform better than older ones. However old updates or Edges that have a continuous stream of comments behave a little bit differently — their Time Decay is typically calculated on the basis of the timing of the last comment. This could be deemed a signal of the relevance of the information in the update.
When marketing your business on Facebook, it is important that your updates and marketing messages get delivered to your fans’ feeds. The ten tactics below will help improve your page’s reach.
1. Post Videos to Improve Weight
2. Improve Affinity by Short, Tweet-like Posts
3. Ask your Fans Questions
4. Improve Affinity with Visual Posts
5. Post Images with a Text Message to Increase Weight and Affinity
6. Post Frequently
7. Use Hashtags
8. Check your Insight Metrics
9. Post at Appropriate Times
10. Post at Times When your Competition Isn’t Posting
Summary
EdgeRank is increasingly important as Facebook both commercializes and attempts to retain its social model. EdgeRank is a metric of how much Facebook thinks your fans should care about your posts. Give them a reason to care. EdgeRank rewards interactions, but you can use it to figure out how to generate interactions too. Further more information please at
WebMarketing Today.
By Kunle Campbell
Repost by Acarre Community Media
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