Ever wonder why only a small fraction of your Facebook fans respond to your updates? Well, it’s Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm at work. How do you increase the exposure of your updates to more fans? The short answer is to increase the EdgeRank score of your page. So, how do you do that?
Before I go into it, let me dispel the myth that the more Facebook fans your page has, the better it is. In fact, the more un-engaged fans it has, the worse its EdgeRank score will be. The lower its EdgeRank score, the worse your Facebook page’s reach will be. A Facebook page with a lousy reach will be ineffective for social media marketing.
What you should focus on is the ratio of two metrics: the number of people “talking about it” to the number of fans. That’s the engagement ratio. The higher your engagement ratio, the higher your EdgeRank score will be. Note that this ratio is also a reflection of higher EdgeRank score. In other words, I believe there is a positive feedback loop when it comes to EdgeRank—the lower your EdgeRank score, the less likely fans will see your updates, which contribute to lower engagement ratio, which in turn result in lower EdgeRank score. To explain this idea better, I will use two specific examples. Take a look at National Australia Bank (NAB)’s page. Its engagement ratio is a miserly 1.7%. Next, take a look at Robert Kiyosaki’s page. Its engagement ratio is 9.9%. I’ll bet that Robert Kiyosaki’s fans are far more likely to see his updates on their ‘Top News’ feed than NAB’s fans.
So, how do you increase the “talking about it” metric? To do that, you must make your page’s updates more compelling for your fans to create a story out of it. A story is created when a fan
- Likes your Page
- Posts to your Page Wall
- Likes, comments on or shares one of your Page posts
- Answers a question you posted
- Responds to your event
- Mentions your Page
- Tags your page in a photo
- Checks in at your Place
- Recommends your Place
When they create a story, it increases their affinity for your page. That will increase your page’s EdgeRank score. Also, videos and pictures updates tend to have higher weight, which means they will have higher EdgeRank scores than simple status updates.
