10 Ways to Crack Facebook Edgerank

Facebook edgerank has been generating a lot of attention the past few month in the social media marketing realm. Many discussions have happened & numerous blog posts written on how to optimize your facebook page wall posts to ensure it reaches as wide an audience as possible. For those who are not aware, your posts on facebook fan page are not displayed to all of your fans even if all of them are live on facebook at the moment of posting the content. How many of your total fans will actually see your post in their 'Top News' tab is determined by an algorithm known as facebook edgerank which mainly consists of 3 components: Affinity (Does the user interact with you often?), Weight (How interactive are the engagements with the post?) & Time decay (How long ago was the post done?).
Here I will discuss 10 ways to crack facebook edgerank:

AFFINITY

#1. Ongoing Engagement

There are many facebook page managers who wonder why the engagement on their pages is so less. Why only a small percentage of total fans is actually liking or replying to the posts. In some cases it is even less than 0.001%! The reason is many companies run initial contests or offers to seduce the users to like their facebook page but eventually stop engaging them, expecting that they will keep liking & commenting on their posts. The reality is majority of those fans become fans only to enter the contest or get some freebies but if you can keep them engaged with timely contests & interesting posts they will keep coming back.

#2. User Generated Content

One very good way to keep the affinity level high of your fans high is to allow & encourage them to upload their pictures. Also encourage them to tag those pictures with their facebook friends and get them liked & commented upon by them. Occasional contests can be launched around this aspect where the fans who get maximum likes or comments on their uploaded pictures are declared the winners.

WEIGHT

#3. Post Interesting & Relevant Content

It is important to generate original content related to your domain which can be in the form of blogs. Content from your blogs can be posted about twice a week. Any more than that, you run the risk of overwhelming your fans and they may  end up unliking your page. Also plan your content in advance. It can be a mix of Poll, Quiz, Humor, Debate, Case Study and News/Interesting Article etc each on different days. The better the content,  the higher the participation & thus it will enhance the facebook edgerank.

#4. Ask Thought Provoking Questions

It is very important to ask thought provoking questions to your page audience as this is one aspect which brings in participation from the audience mainly in the form of 'comments' & of course 'likes' (Comments have the higher weight than likes) which goes on increasing the facebook edgerank. At the same time, it is important to avoid questions asking for simple Yes/No answers which may increase edgerank for the time being but put off your audience in the long run.

#5. Use Rich Media

Every action by the fans on your facebook page has its own weight. For instance, a Comment has higher weightage than a Like as mentioned in the above point. Similarly, pictures have higher weight than videos or links. That is why it is important to use rich media like interesting & relevant images, videos & links in your posts. This increases the facebook edgerank of your posts.

TIME DECAY

#6. Timing It Right

Usually most of the brands post content during the office hours i.e. 9-5. But the truth is, the maximum number of fans log on or check their facebook accounts when they are away from office or are at home, which are off hours. So, plan & schedule your content for posting during outside work hours. It has been found in a recent research that brands which post content outside of normal business hours have 20% higher engagement rates on their posts! And naturally higher engagement will push up the facebook edgerank of your posts.

#7. Keep The Discussions Alive

In most of the cases once the posts have been uploaded on their fan pages, brands don't care how their fans are responding. All they care about is the number of likes & comments, which is a wrong approach. Although number of likes & comments are important but it is not the primary agenda. It is the outcome of the right approach, which is engagement & benefiting your fans. Ching's Secret is a very good example of how to pursue the fans' discussion and to participate & engage with them in a constructive way to the very end till the discussion dies on its own. More the life of some post, higher will be its facebook edgerank.

#8. Cover Current Events

One of the ways to increase the facebook  edgerank in terms of time decay is to post around some interesting current affairs. Amul does it very well in India but they primarily do it on offline media. Still there is a community driven Amul facebook fan page which updates the community about the latest creatives of Amul. MTV India is also known to create interesting posts on their facebook page around current affairs.

METRICS

#9. Use Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights provide interesting data related to your users and the content which you post. This gives you a tremendous amount of opportunity to know about your user demographics as well as which content is working, when it is working and so on. There is no limit to the improvements which can brought upon by acting upon the facebook insights of your page.

#10. Use Edgerank Checker

Brands can also use  the free tool Edgerank Checker which gives a fair idea as in what  your page's edgerank in during a certain period. It also suggests which are the days when you have the best or the worst facebook edgerank and on which days you get the maximum or least new fans on your page. It also grades pages based upon edgerank as follows:
0-6 is below average.
7-13 is average.
14-19 is above average.
Scores above 20 are excellent.

So, what do you think of these 10 ways? Can you suggest any more ways to leverage facebook edgerank?

Original post here

Images Courtesy Likeable.com and cambodia4kidsorg