Facebook News Feed Optimization: 3 Tips On How To Get Your Updates Into Your Target Users News Feeds

Every wonder if your status updates are even being seen by others in your network?

That is a topic that I investigated for my own purposes and came up with a wealth of information I felt every business page admin should know about.

Many Facebook users don’t even know that when you view your news feed, you can view it by the default setting which is ‘Top news’ or by switching it to ‘Most recent’. ‘Top news’ is all the updates Facebook deems most important to you, where ‘Most recent’ is all updates by all of your friends and pages you’ve ever liked. So the vast majority of Facebook users are viewing their home feeds in ‘Top news’ because  1) they don’t pay attention to this and don’t know it exists or 2) don’t know or care to know what the differences are.

Which leads us to a bit of a problem…..how can you get on Facebook’s most popular list and get your updates seen in the ‘Top news’ feed?

Facebook has a well-planned algorithm called EdgeRank which determines which updates actually get shown and to whom. It assigns points to your posting (which they refer to as an ‘object’) by how many interactions you are getting (which they refer to as an ‘edge’). The more edges your object has, the more likely you will be featured on the ‘Top news’ feed of your friends who have liked your page.

So to break it down:

• Increased EdgeRank = Visibility
• Decreased EdgeRank = Obscurity

 

News Feed Optimization Tips to Achieve Increased EdgeRank

1. Relevancy/Relationships-how much engagement you are receiving and the frequency of these interactions

2. The Type of Engagement Activity-this will determine how many EdgeRank points your post receives.

Friends that stalk you=good. If you have a friend who is repeatedly seeking out your page and interacting on it (i.e. clicking on links and viewing photos, etc.), this will help you get seen not only more often in the their newsfeed, but others as well.

You stalking a friend=not good. You will not appear more often in their news feed by doing this, so quit being weird like that

Links to other content on the web trump normal status updates. Facebook values this more as it drives user engagement. When someone clicks that link-you get EdgeRank points.

Photos and Videos trump links. Because both of these deliver more clicks as compared to a regular text update or a link, Facebook loves videos and photos postings and will give extra brownie points when someone clicks on these.

The power of a comment on your post is better yet. This will get you even more points and seen on even more target user’s feeds. Ask your audience an engaging question from time to time to elicit comments.

Here is a bit of advice to keep in mind when adding friends who you will want to suggest your business page to: the more popular they are (i.e. 600+ friends) the less likely your status update will make it to their ‘Top news’ feed as you are then competing with many more updates. So when possible, add friends who have a network of less than 200 friends which will increase the chances that your update will get seen.

3. Timeliness-It is best to receive your comments, likes and clicks the day of or the day after the posting. Facebook values recent activity.

The Game Plan

The Problem: So how does one get people to interact with their postings if they aren’t even getting seen in the first place?

The Solution: Get a posse of friends and employees who will volunteer to help you in your quest to get ranked better and get your content seen. Make sure they all obviously have a Facebook account and that they currently “like” the business page. This should only have to be a temporary period of time. How long it will take will depend on the commitment to quality engagement and the number of volunteers. Just have them start engaging per the above outlined tips and over time, you will start generating some of that natural social buzz that you deserve.  Facebook will start taking notice of your increased popularity and award you with a ‘Top news’ worthy ranking and your post’s exposure will vastly increase to your target market.

If you found value in this post, please share with your social networks or kindly leave a comment below.

President, Bee Social, LLC

Social Media Manager