How to make Facebook's ranking system work for you

1. Understanding EdgeRank
How to Make Facebook’s Ranking System Work for You
E-Book

2. Understanding EdgeRank2
What is Facebook EdgeRank?
When Did Ranking Become So Important?
Why EdgeRank Matters
How to Make EdgeRank Work for You
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Contents

3. Understanding EdgeRank3
EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook to determine what is shown and how
it is ranked in Facebook users’ News Feeds. EdgeRank is also used to refer to the rank
of a brand/page, and to the specific ranking of a particular “edge” (see below).
The formula that dictates an item, connection, or a brand’s EdgeRank is as follows,
courtesy of EdgeRank Checker:
Let’s break that formula down…
Sum of “Edges”:
An edge is an occurrence of some kind of Facebook; a status update, a posted photo, a
like, share, etc. The sum of those is everything that anyone connected to a certain user
does.
Affinity (u):
This is basically the quality of the connection between a brand or another user and the
individual in question. For our purposes today, we’re going to focus on how this affects
brands. The user and the brand’s relationship is affected by how often and in what ways
the user engages with the “edges” generated by the brand.
Weight (w):
An edge’s weight is essentially Facebook’s determination of that story’s importance to
Facebook users. Everything has a weight, whether it’s posted content – photo, video,
link, status – or an action by a user such as a like or comment.
Time Decay (d):
How long it has been since the edge was originally generated. Newer actions or content
are the most valuable, ensuring that the ‘news’ in your feed is as current as possible,
while still being interesting to you.
What is Facebook EdgeRank?

4. Understanding EdgeRank4
Shortly after Facebook’s mid-September update to its EdgeRank algorithm, marketers
began to notice a disturbing trend: their reach numbers seems to be taking a nosedive.
The same techniques that had yielded good reach numbers the previous week were
suddenly showing lackluster analytics.
What experts quickly figured out was that the tweaks made to Facebook’s EdgeRank
algorithm had caused the system to judge that fewer fans cared to see their posts than
was previously thought.
A company called EdgeRank Checker confirmed these suspicions by studying their
clients’ pages, finding that pages in their database were seeing 26% reach on average
before the September 20, 2012 update, and 19.5% after. For those keeping score, that’s
a 6.5% decline in reach.
Not long after these results were posted, a Facebook ad rep contacted the company with
the following explanation:
“While overall engagement should remain relatively consistent as a result of our most
recent optimization, your organic reach may be impacted. The more engaging your
content, the lower the impact this optimization should have on your reach going forward.”
Before 9/20
26%
19.5%
After 9/20
0%
10%
20%
15%
20%
25%
30%
MEDIAN REACH CHANGE (9/20)
edgerankchecker.com
When Did Ranking Become So Important?

5. Understanding EdgeRank5
Facebook’s EdgeRank plays a huge part in how visible a business can be on the social
media site. Visibility is crucial not only to maintaining engagement with the followers you
already have, but also to continuing to gain new likes every day.
When you create a post – an image, a video, a status update – to share with your fans,
the percentage of your total fan base that see it is determined by EdgeRank.
If your post ranks highly based on the algorithm, then more people will see it. And
only those who see your post will have the opportunity to engage with it – like it, share
it, comment on it. An interesting feature of EdgeRank is that it’s dynamic. In other
words, the algorithm continues to re-rank your post over time depending on how much
engagement it is receiving.
Beyond engagement with people who already like your page, EdgeRank is crucial
because it also affects your possibilities for social discovery and amplification, which are
key to building a brand on Facebook.
Social discovery occurs when one of your fans shares your content and it is seen by
someone who was not previously aware of your brand. Amplification is the phenomenon
that happens when that Facebook user then shares your content with their network, and
those connections share it with their own networks, and so on.
Those extra sets of eyes translate into more likes, and eventually more leads for your
business.
Why EdgeRank Matters

6. Understanding EdgeRank6
So now that you understand what EdgeRank is, why it is important, and how recent
changes have created new challenges, how can you take this apparent lemon and make
lemonade?
Perhaps the best and most sustainable way to ensure your posts get the most
engagement from your fans is to make them as visual as possible. EdgeRank’s “weight”
component is based on what types of content users tend to engage with the most. And
this has by far turned out to be photos. The chart below shows 4 different content types
and their rankings, as determined in a study by Wildfire.
If you offer a product that can be photographed, or if you have a lot of events where
you’re taking photos, then you are already ahead of the game.
If your business is less visual by nature, however, there’s still plenty you can do.
Whenever you start to create a post on Facebook, ask yourself ‘is there an image that
could help to represent this?’ There probably is, and if you can think of it (or create
it) you’ll have a much richer content that make your fans love you more, and make
EdgeRank show your posts to more of them to begin with.
Mashable even suggests taking this a step further to always use a photo when you
post, even with non-image content you would’ve posted already. Not only should you be
posing images instead of simply text statuses, think about how you can use an image
to get users’ attention and put links to the content you were going to post in the image
description instead. One example: instead of posting a video link, post a screen grab
from the video as an image and link to the video in the description.
Photo Video Status Link
0%
.2%
.4%
1.0%
.6%
.8%
1.2%
1.4%
1.6%
wildfireapp.com
edgerankchecker.com
FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT/FAN
How to Make EdgeRank Work for You

7. Understanding EdgeRank7
The good news to take away at the end of the day is that the intention of the
EdgeRank algorithm update was for Facebook to ensure that the most engaging content
from the most diligent brands is getting into Facebook users’ news feeds. And while
you’ll definitely have to be more resourceful, even small businesses can make sure they
stay in the mix by continually observing best practices and creatively posting in the most
engaging ways possible.
Conclusion

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