How the Facebook algorithm works, Facebook Organic Reach.

Unplug Infinity
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read
facebook algorithm

Everyone knows Facebook is the largest social media network in the world despite various drawbacks. With approximately 3 billion active users, Facebook is the best tool for targeting your audience. It is the simplest and effective way to market your business. Facebook knows a lot of information about users and this information will be helpful for your business. But at the same time, it might be dangerous for a person’s security.

From the past year, it has created a lot of buzz due to the changes in Facebook privacy settings. The survey carried out by Roisin Linnie found that Facebook organic reach in 2018 has dropped to 34% and user engagement almost dropped by 58% since January and even most of the people are unaware about it. If you’re managing your Facebook brand page, you’ve likely noticed the change.

Mark Zuckerberg announced on January 11th, 2018 that Facebook would be changing its Newsfeed algorithm and it will prioritize more active interactions with friends and family over the marketing content from brands. This change in the Facebook algorithm affects various brands and a decrease in their Facebook organic reach. The only motive behind the change is to engage users on Facebook and keep them longer on the platform.

So before you give up because of the changes, understand that Facebook is still the largest social media network in the world and Facebook organic reach matters a lot. Making its algorithm work for you is a key to successful social media marketing. In this blog, we will see how the Facebook algorithm works and how to make it work for your brands.

The change in the Facebook news feed algorithm:

When a user visits Facebook, there are multiple posts on his news feed. The algorithm takes all these posts and arranges them according to the user interest.

This algorithm is mainly divided into four pieces:

  1. Inventory:

It is the record of our activities or interactions which helps Facebook to understand our interest and as per interest, Facebook refers the available content in the news feed whether it’s posted from family, friends, groups you’ve joined or pages you’ve liked.

  1. Signals: The selection of available content depends on what signals Facebook received. The signals are of different forms:
  • Commenting: The signal at the top of the Facebook algorithm is Comment. The posts that generate communication among users will show at the top in the news feed.
  • Sharing: It is in the second position and the Facebook will now favor the shared posts with comments that start a conversation among users.
  • Reactions: The third main signal is Reaction. It is not as strong as comments and shares but also considered an active form of engagement.
  1. Predictions: At this stage, Facebook uses your information i.e. your profile and activities which helps to decide what to show and keeping away the stuff they think you won’t engage.

4. Score: It is the value which is assigned to the content which helps to determine the relevancy. If the score is higher, the chances the posts appear in the news feed are also higher.

How to make Facebook work for your brands to get succeed?

Now it is very clear that this news feed algorithm has made difficult for brands to reach the maximum audience. Without users commenting, sharing and reacting on your posts, you won’t reach far. But it’s not the end; there are a lot of ways through which you can generate traffic to your page. They are as follows:

  • Focus more on content:

Put the more relevant content in the post that encourages user so they start talking about you i.e. instead of creating content for your brand that users might interact with, you need to start creating content for the users that may touch them emotionally so that they can share, comment or react on your post.

  • Post more interactive content:

There is some content that helps to start a conversation among the active audience. For example, live videos, the discussion between viewers on Facebook takes place. Also, post more videos than images or links. Videos are more powerful in terms of engagement.

  • Join Facebook groups:

Facebook has one more important feature where people can discuss and ask for advice. You can create your own groups or join different groups. They are the perfect way to build the community in which you can market your business.

  • Avoid engagement bait:

Engagement bait is the tactic used to create a Facebook post by which users are interacting through likes, shares, and comments. If you are using Facebook, you will recognize vote, tag, react, share and comment baiting. This baiting obviously causes an increase in user engagement and conversation rate. But the Facebook algorithm finds it irrelevant so the algorithm concentrates on dropping posts or pages like this.

  • Performance analysis:

As per your previous activities, you can able to analyze your top performing contents, likes, dislikes of your followers and what type of responses, likes, comments your page is receiving. You can generate performance analysis and set a benchmark.

Now, it is a huge time to generate new Facebook strategies that will increase Facebook organic reach as per the new algorithm. You’ll definitely achieve success with the help of this blog. We’d love to hear back from you. If you have any doubts feel free to drop us comment below anytime.

Thank you for reading.

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