The document discusses changes to Facebook's Edgerank algorithm and provides recommendations for brands responding to those changes. Key points: - Edgerank now considers four factors: affinity, post type, time, and negative feedback. Engagement improves your score while time decay and negative feedback reduce it. - Reach for brand posts has decreased significantly according to some studies, though Facebook denies this. Engagement per fan reached has increased due to a more efficient algorithm. - To improve visibility, brands should focus on creating engaging content like questions, fill-in-the-blank posts, humor and memes rather than just sharing links. Leveraging trends and being controversial can also help. - While short

1. Facebook Edgerank
The latest updates and
what to do about it
Marie Page BA (hons), FCIM, Chartered Marketer, PGCE
• Director, Musicademy
• Digital Marketing Practitioner
• CIM/CAM Tutor & Examiner
• Blogger for Smart Insights
• @Marie_Page

2. *&”!

3. Edgerank latest and what to do about it
• The Edgerank Algorithm and recent changes
• The impact on brands
• Practical ideas in response
• Some very recent research
• Promoted Posts

5. They may be fans but do they see your updates?
203% PTAT!

6. The Facebook Edgerank Algorithm
• Every bit of FB content is known as an “edge”-
status update, a like, a photo, a change in
relationship status
• The newsfeed isn’t really a feed of news, instead
it’s a chart of the most ‘important’ Edges which
are determined by the EdgeRank Algorithm.
Traditionally 3 elements:
What about the
– Affinity new “Spam”
– Edge weight score?
– Recency

7. EdgeRank is now based on four things:
• Yours and other people's relationship with a brand (affinity): the
more you and other people engage with a post, the more likely you
are to see it
• The type of post: visual posts are favoured over links and simple
status updates. (Hmmm – some recent research disputes this)
• Time: the older a post is, the less likely it is to be viewed...with a
catch (which I will explain below).
• EdgeRank is now also ranked based on the level of negative
feedback a brand and posts receives.
• In short, engagement and the type of post improves your EdgeRank
score, while the time decay and the negative feedback makes it
worse. These four factors combined is what determines the success
of your post.
• http://www.baekdal.com

8. What does Edgerank hide?
When EdgeRank is applied, updates from brand pages dropped 61%, friend posts
increased by 33%, and activity updates (friend actions) dropped by 81%.

9. Why the change in the algorithm?
• “The problem we face with the news feed is
that people come to Facebook everyday, but
people don’t have enough time to check out
absolutely everything that’s going on.”
(Facebook’s Will Cathcart reported by
TechCrunch, 2012)

10. What are the changes?
• PostRocket (2012) reported that the weight of
photos (previously reach winners and therefore
routinely used by brands) has been reduced and
ordinary text update weight increased.
• Reach appears to have decreased
(TechCrunch, 2012a) report that Pagelever find it
stable whereas (SocialBakers, 2012a) and
(WeAreSocial, 2012a) report reductions by as
much as 50%.

11. What are the changes?
• Changes in weight
• Reach? Viral reach?
• Negative feedback – the “spam score”
• + Promoted Posts will now account for 20% of
your newsfeed

12. Are brands or Facebook in denial?
• Facebook has vehemently denied decreasing
Page reach stating that it “all depends on what
set of pages you’re looking at and how many
pages you’re looking at. We’re looking at all
the Pages. The median reach did not
decrease.”(WeAreSocial, 2012b)

13. Relevant newsfeeds
• Facebook maintains that Edgerank is personal
and individual users are presented with the
content types they have most interacted with
in the past (AllFacebook, 2012) so delivering
more relevant content to individual
newsfeeds.
• Ultimately the question is “Will the user
engage with this post?” (AllFacebook, 2012)

14. Reach and Viral Reach
• Jon Loomer (2012) wrote an extensive post pulling together the
differing views on the algorithm change. He argues that only 16% of
fans would see posts anyway (the window of a post being fresh is
perhaps 2 hours and no fan is on Facebook every 2 hours across a
24 hour period). He concluded that the drop in Reach has resulted
in more efficient engagement with more desirable content being
shown and spammy content/Pages being penalised. So whilst his
data shows that Reach has dropped, engagement per fan reached
has increased due to a more efficient algorithm.
• A later post by (Loomer, 2012b) uncovers what he believes to be
the metric that is driving down reach. He found that viral reach is
now 14% of what it once was while viral impressions are about
25%. He concludes that “the new problem isn’t reaching our Fans
(though that may be down slightly), but our Fans being able to
reach their friends with our content.”

16. The impact for brands
• It used to be important to get people to like and
comment on a post, because when they did, all their
friends would see it too
• Not anymore! That is an activity update
• Liking and commenting is still important because it
increases visibility in the newsfeed but it no longer
contributes to generating additional reach towards
friends of fans.
• Now you need to get them to SHARE

17. How have I responded?
• More text only posts
• Questions
• Fill-in-the-gaps
• HOWEVER
“Wow, Marie, I am completely overwhelmed by all the posts, amazing! I
am going to sit down with my boy and we'll go through them all in
detail! Love the suggestions also about him composing his own stuff.
Many, many thanks.” Liz

18. Critique
• Many social consultancies are encouraging you to
create highly engaging posts because that will, in
theory, make your future posts more visible to more
people. For instance, Simply Measured recommend
that you post more "Fill in the blanks" posts because
they drive the most engagement.
• But is this true? Is Facebook really that shallow, or is
there something else going on here that these social
consultancies don't see because they are too blinded
by their narrow surveys?
• From Baekdal (2012) http://bit.ly/TvrevB

19. Content ideas – Fill in the gaps

21. Ask for Engagement
• “Like this if you drink tea, Comment if you
drink coffee, Share if you just want a beer”

22. People follow instructions

23. Seize every opportunity

24. Think before you post
• Look at your Insights data and learn
• Stop posting updates you know will get low
engagement, and even worse negative
feedback
• Post at the optimum time of day
• Spend time on creating copy

25. When you have great content milk it

26. Use polls & ask questions

27. Source: Buddy Media (2011)

28. Make it relevant and engaging

29. Use humour
Average Effectiveness of Funny
Posts - All Pages
50.00%
45.00%
40.00%
Effectiveness
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
Amplification Engagement
Reach %
% %
Funny 45.25% 7.85% 4.85%
Not Funny 32.16% 5.28% 4.61%
Marie Page (2012), Msc Research

30. Funny posts have more reach, virality and
engagement
Musicademy Funny
60.00%
50.00%
Effectiveness
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Reach % Amplification % Engagement %
Not Funny 30.61% 3.73% 2.97%
Funny 51.66% 19.33% 21.33%
Marie Page (2012), Msc Research

31. Content ideas – Humour

32. Content ideas – Humour

33. Content ideas – Humour

34. Allow fans to be funny

35. Ride Memes

36. Make it newsworthy

37. Relational and relevant posts go further
Research into Musicademy Facebook page posts by Marie
Page (2012)
Classification adapted from Ahuja and Medury (2010)
– “Relational” posts ask questions and encourage fan engagement
– “Relevant” posts contain information and links highly applicable to
the fan base

38. Controversy

39. Thomas Baekdal’s research
• Three brands considered:
• Avinash Kaushik's brand page: Great page
where each post is almost like a mini blog
(much longer than the average FB post, and
far more in-depth).
• Porsche: A good example of a brand that has
an optimized Facebook strategy.
• Nieman Journalism Lab: Only post links to
their articles.

40. The test was divided into three stages:
• First month = to follow but not engage with
either brand (to get EdgeRank to give me a lower
score)
• Week after = to follow six more brands, while still
not engaging (to see how the lower score
affected the score of the original three brands).
• Final week = to engage heavily with Porsche, to
see if I could get EdgeRank to favor it over the
other pages.

41. Short posts work best right?
• Keep it short and to the point. Posts of 0 to 80
characters have a 27% higher engagement
rate.
• BUT Avinash (see orange) does it differently
– Posts that are more like blogs than updates

42. Focus on creating long term value
• The best performing brand is the one that
focused on creating long term value, rather than
short term bursts of engagement
• Avinash doesn't focus on engagement. He focuses
on being influential.
• Porsche has more engagement, they experience a
bigger initial boost (better in the short term), but
over time, Avinash wins because of a higher
overall level of exposure (better in the long term).

44. Promoted posts increase visibility
More on Promoted Posts:
http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-
marketing/facebook-marketing/new-facebook-
feature-alert-promoted-post-ads/

45. BUT….
• Baekdal’s research suggests that they are ineffective
• “ I have yet to see a single example where a
Promoted post acts in the way that you expect it to”

46. Downsides?
• People dislike being sold to
(they see the “sponsored”)
• Be careful with friends of fans
• Careful of “You suck” backlash
• Bots issues – try geographic
targeting
• Use in moderation

48. Recent
Promoted Posts

49. Video – YouTube vs Facebook vids