Reaching Your Audience on Facebook: Understanding EdgeRank

Mike Rankin

Type of Content Matters, Too

In addition to counting edges, EdgeRank ranks some types of content higher than others.

Photos rule the News Feed. This is partly natural — images are great at grabbing attention, as every marketer knows, so even without EdgeRank’s help photos would probably get more engagement on Facebook than other kinds of content. But EdgeRank reinforces the effect by recognizing that users love visual content, and therefore bumping it up in the rankings.

Videos rank higher, too, for pretty much the same reasons.

Status Updates seem to rank better than Links — possibly because they’re more likely to be personal, social, and original in nature.

You’ve probably noticed that photos with superimposed text tend to dominate Facebook’s News Feed lately. Some days my News Feed is pretty much a steady stream of photos with quotations, quips, or other messages layered on top of them in Photoshop. Here’s an example of a well-executed combination of image and message that’s perfectly engineered to go viral in the News Feed:

Figure 5: Text that accompanies an image is more likely to go viral on Facebook than text that travels alone.
This terrific tribute to actress Kathryn Joosten, who had just passed away when it appeared in my News Feed, is both moving and inspiring — the kind of emotional appeal that always gets people clicking on Facebook.
But it’s not just the message that makes this bit of content so EdgeRank-friendly. If the author had merely posted this text alone as a status update or a note on Facebook, it wouldn’t have traveled as far. Placing the text on top of a photo not only helps it to grab its audience visually — it takes advantage of EdgeRank’s built-in preference for images.

The Engagement-Rich Get Richer

This brings us to the single biggest buzzword in the social media field: engagement. We’re not talking about those announcements you see on Facebook that two of your friends are planning to tie the knot. We mean engagement in the sense of that:

You’re successfully grabbing your audience’s attention
They’re consistently interacting with you
And ideally, interacting with each other as well

… all of which generates News Feed activity, keeps EdgeRank happy, and helps your content reach more people.
Pages that consistently generate lots of interaction from their fans are considered “high-engagement” pages by Facebook. EdgeRank interprets the fact that they get so much response to mean that content from these pages is more valuable and welcome to users. So EdgeRank is more likely to display content posted by high-engagement pages to a bigger audience. It’s EdgeRank’s way of giving them credit for having a good track record.
In that sense, you can think of EdgeRank as being a little like a DJ who’s more willing to play a new song by an established artist with a string of Top 40 hits, than one by an unknown artist who’s never charted.
And this ties in with the affinity score concept we talked about earlier. When users regularly interact with a page, they’re building up their affinity score with that page, increasing the odds that they’ll see its content in the future.
The downside of this is that if your page has been around for a while, and your content hasn’t been inspiring any response from your page’s fans, EdgeRank will judge your page to be “low-engagement” — and display its content to less people. This can become a self-perpetuating spiral, because the less people who see your postings, the less chance there is to engage them.
So if you’re in that situation and you want more users to see what you post, you’ll need to ramp up your game by creating more engaging content — and you might even need to give your page a shot in the arm by investing a little in paid ads or Promoted Posts, if you can, to draw users back to your page and get them clicking and commenting on your postings.

EdgeRank Takeaways: How to Give Your Content the Edge

We can pretty much sum up all of that as follows:
Fresher items that have gotten a lot of response from friends you care about are most likely to get promoted by EdgeRank.
Especially if they’re visual in nature.
So with all of that in mind, you’re probably already starting to think of some useful strategies for creating EdgeRank-friendly content on Facebook.
Ultimately, it all comes down to the fact that you need to post content that really appeals to your audience. It’s not just about what you’d like to share — it’s about getting inside your audience’s head and figuring out what they’ll respond to.
Here are my key tips for scoring points with EdgeRank:
1. Post content that motivates your followers to interact, so they generate edges for your postings.
2. Because photos rule the News Feed, you’re going to want to think about creating graphics to communicate some of your key messages, such as the photos with superimposed text we talked about earlier — instead of just posting those messages as status updates or links.
3. Post a varied mix of content, including plenty of visuals — both photos and videos, if possible.
4. Try to start conversations and keep them going. In addition to adding edges, each new person who joins the conversation has the potential to make the posting visible to their friends — especially the ones with whom they have a high affinity score.
5. Ask questions. Questions are a great way of starting conversations, as well as getting valuable feedback from your audience. (Just make sure that the questions you ask are relevant and thoughtful. Some pages make the mistake of asking questions that are obviously just for the sake of provoking interaction, and that can come across as patronizing to a discerning audience.)

Figure 6: The most viral post on the Facebook page for novelist Russell Hoban so far was a simple question designed to get his fans talking about his books.
6. Post often enough to make sure you always have fresh, recent content on your Timeline — and that you’re regularly giving your audience opportunities to interact with you. To keep a page’s engagement levels healthy, I recommend posting at least once per day, at least three or four days per week.
7. Widen your circle of interaction. If you find yourself only interacting with the same small group of friends on Facebook day after day, make an effort to reach outside of that bubble and build up affinity with a larger set of people, so your audience doesn’t get artificially limited by EdgeRank. Visit the profiles of friends you haven’t seen in your News Feed lately, and Like or comment on their recent postings. It’s not just good for your social life to get out of the neighborhood once in a while — doing so will help increase your reach when you share postings from your business page to your personal profile.
To maximize edges on your content:

Use positive reinforcement, and don’t be stingy with Likes! When people comment on your postings, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t respond to their comments with a comment of your own, as well as clicking Like on their comments (except in cases where a comment is downright objectionable in some way).
There are two reasons that doing this pays off: First, by Liking and replying, you’re giving your commenters positive reinforcement. You’re telling them that their input is welcome and appreciated, which encourages them to keep interacting in the future.
But just as important is that fact that you’re drawing them back to the thread. When someone gets a notification that you’ve Liked or replied to their comment, they’re likely to come back to the posting to check it out. They may wind up adding another comment, or Liking someone else’s comment — which helps keep the conversation going, and adds edges to the posting overall, increasing the chances that it will be seen by yet more people.

Be a welcoming host! As you respond to the comments you receive, make it a priority to be gracious and friendly. Say “thank you” whenever it’s appropriate. Address your commenters by name, and let them know you’re paying attention to what they tell you and that you value their input. (And that input can be truly valuable — Facebook gives you direct access to what your customers are thinking. So don’t be shy about asking them!)

Do your best to build a community. By making your page a destination for friendly conversation — simply by being a good moderator and host — you can gradually create a sense of community among your commenters. If your commenters get to know each other, form friendships, and as a result build up strong affinity scores within that community, you’ll have struck EdgeRank gold.

Doing these things will pay off doubly, because in addition to helping you build up your score with EdgeRank, they’ll help you build real relationships with your audience — which will have value for your business that goes well beyond your EdgeRank score.