There is a lot of grumbling among brand page administrators about the recent changes Facebook has made to its EdgeRank algorithm. That’s the formula Facebook uses to determine how many of your fans see a given post in their newsfeeds. Basically, the more fans interact with your posts by liking, commenting or sharing, the more they often they will see your posts. The feeling among a lot of managers, however, is that since the end of September EdgeRank has been tweaked so that fewer fans are seeing posts. Many are questioning the social media giant’s motives.
Not everyone reports seeing that effect, at least not to the same degree. At the Central Valley Business Journal, for example, we’ve noticed a moderate drop in activity. The problem is that Facebook’s policy creates a sort of reverse-snowball effect: the less frequently fans see your posts, the less they interact with them.
Many brand managers suspect Facebook is tweaking its algorithm in an effort to get business pages to pay to promote their posts. It’s well known that since Facebook went public, there has been pressure to monetize the site. But the supposed pay-to-play strategy has left some managers feeling blackmailed.
One of of those administrators is director Sergio Toporek, who runs a page for his nonprofit. He says he complained to Facebook about his shrinking reach and was told he should consider paying to promote some of his posts. He then wrote an open letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg:
“Truthfully speaking, after investing much time, money, and effort building a community which I’m now being limited to reach, I find Facebook’s current practices disconcerting. Not only because you’re preventing me from reaching members I’ve already paid to connect with, but because you’ve basically broken your own functioning system in order to sell us the solution.”
Another vocal opponent to the changes is Facebook brand star George Takei, who is including a chapter on EdgeRank in his new book “Oh Myy.” Here is his response to Toporek’s open letter:
“I am also curious as to why interactivity rates on my page appear to fluctuate so much when I have done nothing different. I have not been pressured to use promoted pages, but I have had to take active steps to get fans to add my page to their “interests” so that it has a higher likelihood of appearing in their news feed.”
It’s important to note that Facebook denies it has changed its algorithm in order to pressure brand pages to pay for promoted posts. And last week, TechCrunch that Facebook says average page reach has not decreased.
Paying for a promoted post can increase that post’s reach considerably. We experimented with it at the Central Valley Business Journal, and for $10, we increased our reach 534 percent.
What if you don’t want to pay for post or can’t afford it? AdAge has some tips on getting the most for your effort:
- Adapt your content strategy. AdAge says that if your organic (unpaid) reach really is down, focusing on making posts go viral is more important than ever. Encourage users not to just “like” a post. Try to get them to comment or share it. Facebook will weigh that in your favor.Linking off of Facebook hurts viral reach, so the goal must be to create and publish more content that inspires sharing. The more your fans share, the more viral impressions you get no matter how much Facebook tweaks its algorithm
- Change the way your content looks. I’ve seen some conflicting data on this, but text isn’t getting “likes” the way they used to. Photos are the big great attention-getters now. And not just regular photos. There’s a reason you see so many photos with messages on them. People respond to them and share them.Achieving high levels of engagement and growth, however, will require an increased investment in content creation.
- Get smarter about your paid media. According to AdAge, both the power and the efficiency of paid media have increased as reduced organic impressions have cleared out some space. AdAge says its Facebook contacts have reinforced this notion:
“We’re trying to push clients into changing their thinking,” Facebook told us specifically. “They won’t be able to affect the organic reach by that much anyway, perhaps 10 percent at most. … We are talking to them about the paid aspect and how those ad dollars are driving great returns as well as being able to reach millions on mobile.”
What has been your experience with Facebook? Are you seeing the growth and engagement you want? What are you doing to improve?
