Recent controversy over average Facebook Page reach led Facebook to publicly announce the four main factors it uses to determine the reach each Page post gets.
Reach refers to the number of your Facebook fans (users who Like your Page) who see each of your posts in their News Feed.
The 4 Factors
- Whether you interacted with an author’s posts before: If you Like every post by a Page that Facebook shows you, it will show you more from that Page.
- Other people’s reactions to a specific post: If everyone on Facebook that’s shown a post ignores it or complains, it’s less likely to show you that post.
- Your interaction with posts of the same type in the past: If you always Like photos, there’s a better chance you’ll see a photo posted by a Page.
- Complaints: If a specific post has received complaints by other users who have seen it, or the Page that posted it has received lots complaints in the past, you’ll be less likely to see that post. This factor became a lot more prevalent in September 2012.
Maybe reach decreases on some Pages, but people interact more with the News Feed overall, according to Facebook’s News Feed product manager Will Cathcart. Cathcart said,
“We started penalizing things that had an above average rate of complaints, and rewarding things that had a below average rate of complaints. Facebook believes the change was a success because engagement went up and complaints went down in the double-digit percentage.”
There are a number of services that have popped up to help you optimize your posts for Edgerank, just like SEO for Google.
One such service is EdgeRank Checker: it monitors and analyzes your Facebook post data to show you the level of interaction you’re getting with your posts and provides recommendations to help optimize your posts for EdgeRank.
In short, EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed—and how high—on the News Feed.
For more information you can view What Is EdgeRank? and Social Media Today.