Facebook’s ranking system has enormous implications for the benefits social media can bring for your businesses. What exactly is behind all the excitement? An impressive little newsfeed algorithm known as EdgeRank.
What is EdgeRank?
EdgeRank is the system Facebook uses to determine what stories are most relevant and to whom, ensuring your updates get posted only to those pages and people who will really be interested. An ‘Edge’ is any interaction that happens on Facebook like comments, status updates, likes and shares.
EdgeRank is based on a pretty complex algorithm, but it’s premise is very straightforward: the more popular your post, the greater the number of interactions your fans have with it, and how recent your post is are the primary factors EdgeRank looks at when deciding how to rank your story.
EdgeRank’s Ranking is broken up into 3 segments:
Affinity
“Affinity” is just EdgeRank’s fancy way of saying “how connected you are to a page or person.” If you interact with one of your friends more often than others, your posts will show up on that friend’s page. If I post on your page from time to time, it’s likely your story will show up on my page as well. The more you interact with someone, the more likely it is that your posts will show up on their feeds.
Weight
Certain things you do on Facebook have a specific gravity. Or “relative weight,” to be more technical. To put it plainly, if you post something it has weight, if your friends or fans comment on it, it has more weight. There are other variables that affect an action’s weight, including how many Likes or comments it gets. Comments will generally lead to a higher weight than Likes alone will.
Time Decay
Time Decay simply refers to how new the item is. The newer the update, the better. If you recently posted something on Facebook, it’s more likely to show up on your friends’ feed…so timing is very important.
How EdgeRank Can Help You
From the above, we can see that Popularity times Relevance times Newness = How many fans will see your post.
Quite simply, EdgeRank ensures that you maintain a strong social connection with those pages and people who are more likely to be interested in what you or your business are doing. To take advantage of EdgeRank, you must remember that interaction is a key to success. Interact often with those pages and people you want to associate with. Promote interaction not just by posting offers, but by giving friends and fans reasons to interact with you through Likes, comments, and shares by giving them smart, well-written, and persuasive calls to action.
