If you have any kind of a presence on Facebook, you likely have a Facebook Page rather than a Facebook profile. It is our view around these parts that it is important to go where the fish are – and there are lots of fish on Facebook. But any Facebook Page administrator will tell you that creating a page is easy – making it successful is hard.
One reason for that is Facebook itself. If you’ve been administering a Facebook Page for a while, you probably have heard of EdgeRank. What is EdgeRank? It is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what content shows up in your news feed. Here’s a quick primer. The bottom line: just because someone has liked your Page, does’t necessarily mean they will see your content.
And this is an important point to understand. Edgerank functions so that the more your fans interact with your Page, the more they are likely to see your last post, photo, question or video. If they don’t, Facebook will not show it in their news feeds. Fair? Maybe not. But that is how Edgerank works.
That’s why you can’t stop at acquiring likes – you need to have a plan to regularly interact with your Facebook community. It really is a case of “use it or lose it”. It doesn’t matter how many likes you have, it is how active your fans are. To illustrate, Net Conservative has an excellent analysis of Barack Obama’s Facebook Page, which shows that while he is way ahead in the “like” count, activity on the Page is far behind some of the GOP Presidential candidates.
But where do you start? The first thing you need to do is find out where you stand. You should already be familiar with Facebook Insights, but if not, click here to go to your dashboard. That will tell you how your users are interacting with your Page.
Another helpful tool is Edgerank Checker, which has some solid resources for free members, but provide comprehensive reports on the best time to post, the content that gets the most fan reactions (comments, likes, shares, etc), with a pro account. This way you will know where you stand.
The most important thing is to recognize what works for your Page and your audience. There are literally hundreds of posts on how to improve your Page’s Edgerank, but it really boils down to knowing your audience and understanding what they respond to the best. That can be done by reviewing insights by determine what type of content got the biggest response and when they are likely to interact with the content. And every Page – including yours – is different.
Buddy Media recently published an excellent study that provides some excellent data on Facebook activity and how you may use that in your industry to increase community interaction.
Just remember, even for big brands, getting seen by Facebook fans is a tough hill to climb. But putting effort into your content and measuring what works will mean more people will see your content and (hopefully) share it and even take action.