A critical mass enables coveted Facebook engagement
If you’re anything like me, changes Facebook made on September 20 to its algorithm for what it shows you came and went without noticing. But there are good reasons why we should know how Facebook decides what goes into people’s news feeds especially if you are involved in administering a page.
More than ever engagement being rewarded
As I understand it, the change does even more than in the past to reward posts that are engaging Facebook users. While this criteria has always been a part of how Facebook decides what posts to show you, it is now a bigger part of the decisions it makes. Factors such a recent posts and the strength of your perceived strength of your relationship with a person or page continue to factor into the outcome.
How Facebook’s new algorithm affects you
For the average user that means you’re more likely to see posts from the pages you like especially if you or others are interacting with posts by liking them, commenting on them or sharing them. But it also means that you’re less likely to see posts from some of your friends especially posts that don’t inspire people to interact with their status update.So if you enjoy getting updates that give you updates into your friends lives that help you to stay in touch but that aren’t likely to inspire an action, you’re probably seeing less from them than you desire.
Jay Baer wrote a post recently that provided advise on how you can take greater control over your Facebook newsfeed. He suggests having your feed setting changed to show the more recent posts, using the friend’s organizer tool and changing story preferences for friends. The organizer tools is where you can organize friends into lists somewhat similar to the circles on Google+ or as Jay suggests you can classify some “Facebook Friends” as acquaintances. The latter I find especially helpful for casual friends and allows you to easily share with “Friends but not Acquaintances” without hurting anyone’s feelings or revealing more than you are comfortable with some people.
Who are your close friends?
What Jay didn’t mention is that you can also classify Facebook friends as “Close Friends.” You will then receive a notification every, and I mean every, time one of them posts to Facebook. You’ll never miss anything! But that’s where the story preference tool comes in handy as you can indicate that you only want updates with a certain level of importance or limited to certain types of activity. You can even hide someone from your news feed entirely.
I’d suggest making these changes on an as needed basis. But classifying people as Close Friends or Acquaintances is best done all at one shot in my opinion though it also requires making that decision for every new friend you add.
How Facebook’s new algorithm affects your page
If you manage a Facebook page that is engaging people, you’ll be in good shape says Shel Holtz. He makes a good point that quality is better than quantity by showing how Pepsi is likely to fare better than Coke because although its fan base is smaller, it is more engaged.
That’s easy enough to say if you’re talking about millions of fans. But what about your average small or medium sized social profit that counts its fans in 10s or 100s? On the one hand, the same is true. Engagement is always better than quantity.
Yet, it is also true that you require a certain critical mass for engagement to more likely occur. It comes down to the more people who see your post, the more likely they are to see it and interact with it and the more likely that their friends are going to see it which increases the chance that their friends like your page, etc., etc., etc. Steve Irvine of Facebook Canada emphasized this point in his presentation to ArtezInterAction.
Getting a critical mass on Facebook
The question then is how to get a critical mass? Letting supporters know by e-mail, in e-mail signatures, on your website, on your print material and just about any other way you communicate is important. Then having interesting content that people find valuable or where they can be helpful is important as is responding to their comments and talking with a conversational tone and language are all important.
But THE best way is to use Facebook ads. I’ve seen several times that Facebook ads work extremely well to introduce new people to a page. You still need to do all the good stuff necessary so they want to click like and then to keep them interested and involved but nothing is better than Facebook ads to introduce your page to your target audience. With a modest amount of money (a couple hundred dollars may be enough), you can see a dramatic growth in your fan base. If your making good use of the page and updating regularly, you’ll also see an increase in interactions and reach.
Just remember to pay for clicks and not impressions.
Once you feel you’ve reached a critical mass or maxed out on your budget (the former is more likely to happen before the latter), I recommend keeping a friends of Facebook fans campaign going on simmer to keep introducing new people to your page but at a slower pace.
