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Ever wondered why certain people/pages always show up in your Facebook News Feed, and others barely ever do? Who sees what is largely determined by your "affinity," part of Facebook's Edge Rank system.
A few weeks ago, I sent a tip on how Facebook Edge Rank treats different types of content. It's also important to know how Facebook treats interactions.
Facebook tracks how people interact both with your page (personal profile or fan page), and with individual posts. Here are a few things to consider when building your brand on Facebook.
- Interactions breed views. The more a fan or friend interacts with your page, the more likely your posts are to show up in her news feed.
- Affinity is contagious. The more people interact with a specific post, the more relevant Facebook thinks it is, and Facebook moves the content higher for all your fans. Getting active users to interact more will help ensure that less active users see more content, too.
- All interaction is not equal. As with different content types, Facebook values some interactions more than others. Shares are the most valuable, followed by Comments, followed by Likes.
So what can you do? There are two simple steps to keep in mind that can really help your affinity ratings grow:
- Ask people to interact with your posts! For example, if you post a link to a rally, you might say, "Tell us why you're coming in the comments," or, "Like this post if you plan to attend."
- Create "shareable" content. This is something you'll have to play around with to see what your fans/friends respond to, but keeping an eye on what people share can help you develop a better strategy for creating content that people will share.
Have questions about how to manipulate Facebook to your advantage? Ask them in the comments!
Evan Sutton is Communications Manager at NOI
Photo from Sweet Hoboken, via Creative Commons
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