Facebook EdgeRank and What It Means to B2B Marketing

The Facebook EdgeRank has been the topic of most discussions in the social media world lately. An important algorithm, EdgeRank can affect the way your prospects and followers interact with you and your company. In order to understand how EdgeRank affects B2B marketing, we must first define it.

According to PostRocket, EdgeRank is “an algorithm used by Facebook to determine where and what posts appear on each individual user’s News Feed in order to give users relevant and wanted content.” Three different factors are considered in the EdgeRank algorithm, which are affinity, weight and time decay.

Affinity is essentially a user’s relationship with a brand. This part of the algorithm takes user engagement with a post from a brand as well as engagement from the user’s friends into consideration, which include sharing, liking and commenting.

Analyzing the posts that utilize new features is defined as weight. Different features hold different weights, which means pictures and videos rank higher than links and plain text updates. However, engagement from other users is also taken into consideration when assessing a post’s weight. For instance, a plain text update that has an abundant amount of likes, comments and shares will hold more weight than a photo post that has little or no engagement from users.

Finally, time decay assesses the age of a post. A post will continue to lose value over time so that users’ News Feeds are fresh and current. Though a user’s engagement is also taken into consideration, meaning a user who only logs into Facebook once a week might still see a post in his or her News Feed that is a few days old.

You might be wondering what all of this information means for you and B2B marketing. According to PostRocket, 96 percent of fans don’t return to a brand’s page after the first engagement and your posts are 40 to 150 times more likely to reach fans in the News Feed than your page. Since 27 percent of all time on Facebook is spent on the News Feed, this is critical for your B2B marketing company. This means creating fresh, relevant and remarkable posts is essential.

In order to increase the EdgeRank of your posts, take a look at a few helpful hints:

• Short and sweet: According to Facebook, posts that are between 100 and 150 characters have 60 percent more likes than those above 250 characters. Keep your posts short, sweet and to the point.
• A picture is worth a thousand words: Always think about how to incorporate photos and videos into your posts in order to increase engagement. A post that has a photo album, picture or video sees 180 percent, 120 percent and 100 percent more engagement than posts without visual elements.
• Be consistent: It is also important to have a regular posting schedule to ensure your company is staying top-of-mind and relevant. Be sure to post engaging, remarkable and original content frequently.

If you are in B2B marketing, Facebook can be a powerful tool for staying connected to prospects as well as establishing yourself as a thought leader in the industry. How do you utilize Facebook posts to increase engagement among your prospects? Share with us.