How Will Facebook's EdgeRank Affect Your Page

Guest post by Steve Mehr, CEO of WebShark360

If you're administering a Facebook page, then you're likely concerned with how to reach more users with your content.  By increasing your reach and influence, you'll be more likely to influence these users to purchase your goods or services.  Unfortunately, it's not always easy to cut through the noise of a person's Facebook news feed.  In fact, many pages find themselves lost among the noise.  How do you keep up?

By knowing how Facebook determines your content's visibility, you can adjust your content marketing strategies.  Understanding Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm is critical to understanding how you can better reach your fans and followers.

What is EdgeRank?

EdgeRank is Facebook's algorithm which determines the content to show in users' news feed. Based on a number of factors, EdgeRank determines which content may be most valuable and therefore, interesting to its users. Understanding how EdgeRank works can help you to make smarter decisions in regard to your content marketing strategy. Consider the following elements of the EdgeRank algorithm:

• Affinity - users' prior interactions with the Facebook page.  The more a user interacts with a Facebook page, the more frequently the page appears in users' Facebook news feeds.
• Weight - users' prior interactions with Facebook posts of the same type. Users who typically engage with videos will find more videos in their news feed and people who prefer photos will be shown more photos in their Facebook news feed.
• Time decay - EdgeRank shows favor to newer content over older content.  Therefore, fans and followers will not be shown older content from your Facebook page in their news feed.  Instead, they will be shown newer content.
• Negative feedback - users' negative engagement with a Facebook post such as clicking to hide an item or unliking a page. The more negative feedback your page accumulates, the less likely it is that your fans and followers will see any of your content. 

Based upon these elements, Facebook determines whether or not to show your content to users in the news feed and which users it may show them to. To increase your visibility among Facebook users, it's crucial to understand how to avoid negative feedback and how to leverage the affinity, weight, and time decay elements to increase fan engagement.

How to Use EdgeRank to Your Advantage

Using a tool like EdgeRank Checker, you can determine how your content is shared and prioritized, or not.  By understanding how your page shows in users' news feeds, you can determine how to improve upon your efforts.  The analytical data provided can help page managers to understand how to improve their posts and engagement in the following ways:

• Understanding what kinds of posts gain the most attention and interaction.
• Determining how long users engage with posts you've made.
• Knowledge regarding how often to post.

Understanding your EdgeRank is about understanding how to maximize your efforts to reach the most amount of people possible. Once you understand the fruits of your current labors, you can make adjustments to ensure that you continue to reach the most amount of people with your posts.