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This was the title of an episode from one of my favorite shows; it had a guy who could see the future. Now marketers like us would give an arm and a leg for powers like that so we could see trends and tailor our strategy accordingly but unfortunately, we are not that lucky so we have to depend on a few tools to help us predict with a certain degree of uncertainty.

Which brings me to the topic of Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm. Now this is something that would definitely help you to reach your audience better, and this is how Edgerank will help you.

Simply put, Edgerank as defined by Facebook is: Edgerank = Σ uwd

• u= affinity score between the edge creator and the object creator
• w  = weight of the edge created
• d= time decay factor based on how long ago the object was created

Before we go into the nitty gritty details of this formula, we need to understand what ‘objects’ and ‘edges’ are. Simply put, objects are the posts that a page owner creates, such as a status update, photo or link. The edges are the actions that another user takes on your objects such as tagging, leaving a comment, liking a post or sharing it. So how does Facebook decide which object to display on somebody’s newsfeed?

Now the influencing part:

Consider an example that you, as a brand, have a huge campaign coming up and you need to make sure that this content appears on your fans’ pages consistently. What do you do to ensure that? The first step would be to increase you affinity score or ‘u’, which can be done by posting objects that your fans like to engage with. Remember that affinity is one sided. If you stalk somebody on Facebook, then that person will show up more on your newsfeed and not the other way round. The point is to increase your fans’ affinity to you. They have to visit your page and not the other way around. So start posting content that encourages your fans to create more edges (likes, comments, shares). The more fans interact, the higher the affinity score will be.

But, before you go posting all kinds of stuff, take a step back and look at the second element in formula. This element is the weight of the edge or ‘w’_. Not all edges are measured the same. Some edges are worth more, read as have a higher weight, than others. For example, comments are edges that have the highest scores, followed by shares and likes. Therefore, to get a higher weight, you need to post content that elicits more comments.

The third element in the formula is the time decay or recency factor ‘d’_, which gives us an idea of how ‘new’ the objects and edges are. The newer a post or an action taken on it is, the more chances it has of showing up on the newsfeed. This recency factor diminishes as the post gets older, kind of like a perfume that loses its scent as the day wears by.  In order to make sure that your posts live longer on the newsfeed, it maybe necessary to post a lot, sometimes even multiple times in a day. How often you do that depends on how long the fan activity is for on your page’s post.

The bottom line is if you have a big campaign coming up and need more eyeballs on your project, you will have to post engaging content in advance, perhaps multiple times in a day, so that you get a higher Edgerank and climb up the Facebook news feed. Posting tepid content just won’t cut it anymore.

Edgerank Tips:

We now know that we need a Facebook content strategy to deal with Edgerank so here are a few more tips that would help you fine tune your strategy:

1. A typical Facebook post reaches about 17% of your fan base
2. The average life of a Facebook post is about three hours
3. Comments carry more weight than likes
4. Photos and call-to-action status updates are more valuable than third party links
5. Facebook analyzes relationships too, so it is more likely you will have a higher affinity to your cousin on Facebook

Here’s to a more engaged Facebook fan page! Happy posting.

Author: Joanita Bora (@Joanita1)