What content do you want to see in your Facebook news feed? The answer is highly debated and varies according to each individual user on this popular social media platform.

Facebook’s ever-changing algorithm, EdgeRank, determines what shows up in individual news feeds. It’s helpful to understand some basics about the algorithm in order to get the most mileage from your Facebook business page.

EdgeRank sorts posts based on three factors: affinity, weight and time decay. Higher rankings in these three areas means an item is more likely to show up in a user’s news feed.

Here’s a brief look at these determining factors:

  • Affinity – The relationship between the content creator and the user. Content created, liked or shared by those closest in affinity to you is more likely to show up in your news feeds.
  • Weight – The reaction or interaction (likes, comments, shares) received by an item. More positive responses and interactions mean an item is more likely to make it into news feeds.
  • Time decay – The timeliness or recency of a post and responses to it. Posts are most likely to be displayed in news feeds within a short timeframe of being posted, liked, commented on or shared.

How to Optimize for EdgeRank

To optimize your Facebook content strategy, consider these questions:

  • What content will give the best impression of my company?
  • What type of content is most likely to prompt a like, share or comment?
  • What time of day are most (60 percent or more) of my fans on Facebook?

Help with the answers to these questions may be found on your Facebook business page’s Insights option. On your Admin Panel, look for “Insights” and click on “See All.”  This will display a page showing what posts received the most responses (views, likes, shares and comments) from your fans. Make note of what these posts have in common (subject, day/time posted, content type, etc.) and plan posts similar to these in the future. If there are no noticeable trends, try varying your content types (photo, video, links, polls, etc.) and posting days/times for a few weeks, then check the results on Insights.

Engaging your Facebook fans, not attaining a high EdgeRank ‘score,’ is the objective of your content strategy. But understanding how EdgeRank works to prioritize and display content, and what content engages your fans, helps you plan ways to get your news in front of more people on Facebook.

Contact Page Progressive if you want to learn more about marketing with Facebook.