With all of the changes on deck for Facebook, it will be interesting to see how the Edge Rank algorithm will potentially change and how this may impact Brands usage of Facebook.
What is Edge Rank? And why would I care if it changes? When you first visit your Facebook top news feed, you may notice that the topics discussed are not always a live representation of your friends updates but it is actually a collection of updates predetermined by Facebook.
The process to determine what you see in your newsfeed is managed by Facebook’s Edge Rank. This is the algorithm that Facebook uses to display content from your network that it deems you would find the most engaging.
From a brand marketing perspective driving relevance and engagement through the newsfeed is one of the key benefits of the platform. Thus creation of a content strategy that capitalizes on the Edge Rank algorithm is of paramount importance.
Edge Rank is calculated by weighing Affinity, Weight & Time Decay as it applied to your network.
Affinity = The more you interact with certain individuals, the higher your affinity to that individual and the higher likelihood that you will see their updates.
Weight = Weight & interaction are similar as this category is dependent on the number of likes & comments that your update has received.
Time Decay = As with anything, the value/relevance of the post decays over time as new content is published.
Moontoast had a great infographic that highlighted the Edge Rank algorithm.
When maximizing your Edge Rank position it is important to engage as the brand with the comments from your fans as this helps create additional affinity connections.
It is also important to drive engagement on a post level as this is now aggregated on the Friend Activity tab. See previous post on Friend Activity.
It is also important to occasionally drive likes on the post level as this not only drives additional reach via fans networks but also impacts how often the brands message would appear as Top News.
This also ties in nicely with the Sponsored Stories ad units as they can drive likes on the post level.
Finally, by providing relevant & timely content at a cadence your fanbase is comfortable with, it is possible to limit the effects of time decay.
As the new Facebook timelines are rolled out to the masses and additional activity streams are in place, it will be very interesting to see how the concept of Edge Rank evolves with the next iteration of Facebook.
Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360
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