How to tame Facebook’s algorithm and reach more people with your posts?

Nataša Ravnikar18.05.2016Marketing

Have you ever wondered why Facebook shows certain posts on your news feed and not others? Are your posts getting great engagement one day and then the next you feel they don’t get the attention they deserve? It is highly probable that your content isn’t getting shown due to Facebook’s algorithm, which decides when, how often and to whom it will show certain posts. Let’s look at how Facebook’s feed actually works and how to tame it into our advantage.

#1 News feed is the eye into the world and the view isn’t coincidental.

Have you ever thought that, on Facebook, everything happens for a reason? The developers behind this amazing platform are faced with a difficult task, which is the consequence of its sudden growth: how to logically arrange the enormous amount of information posted by its users and show them to other users. Social media is based on people and, when they get dissatisfied, they go elsewhere. So despite the beliefs of many, the main job of the news feed is to make work easier for their users, offering only what it believes is more relevant.

#2 Facebook knows you like the back of its hand.

How does Facebook choose which posts to show? By using an algorithm. The algorithm is Facebook’s detective that constantly keeps an eye on you and tracks your behavior, clicks to pages, your likes and comments. Based on your Facebook past, your news feed will show content for which Facebook believes will interest you or which you are more likely to share or react to in any way.

#3 If you learn to understand it, you might become good friends.

Before we closely examine the analysis of all the factors that influence the choice of content for the news feed, we wish to emphasize that Facebook’s algorithm is an extremely complex matter that keeps on changing. What we’re presenting is a simplified “formula”, which includes only the most important factors.

Factors that Facebook takes into account when choosing the selection of posts

Interest: The algorithm evaluates how interesting a post will be to a user, according to their browsing history and previous interactions with other users and companies.
Author: What’s important? Who is the author of the post, what is their relationship with the user (friend, relative, acquaintance, company, etc.) and how many times the user has messaged them or commented and liked their photos – all previous interaction is taken into account.
Popularity: The popularity of the post with other users who have already seen it. If the post is popular with other users and especially friends (taking into account the number of comments and likes), the post has a higher chance of increasing its reach. Google and Facebook therefore have the same goal: to spread high quality content.
Type: The type of post is also important – is it a link, a photo, a URL link or a combination of the previously stated? The algorithm evaluates what type of post seems to be more interesting to the user.
Time: The time of posting is also one of the factors that algorithm takes into account. The average life span of a Facebook post is 2–3 hours, except when the algorithm detects that a post is more important and therefore shows it for a longer period of time.

#4 The fight for survival is inevitable.

When posted, every content goes through a procedure that looks most like an auction, where every post is given a virtual grade of relevance for every individual user, based on their past behavior and preferences. Based on this grade, the posts in the news feed are classified by relevance. The advantage is always given to family and friends, only then come the posts of companies and brands. This way, Facebook ensures a better user experience and at the same time monetizes the reach, which we’ll present later on.

Classifying posts according to the assessment of relevance

Imagine your older sister getting a baby, but you don’t know that yet because you’ve been away on a business trip. When you first sign in on Facebook to check your news feed, your best friend posts a photo with a beer in his hand on top of a mountain :). If the news feed is working correctly, your sister’s news about her newborn should have advantage and would show before your friend’s photo despite the later date.

#5 We’re most susceptible before bedtime.

What is the best time to post in order to reach as many people as possible? As we’ve mentioned in the previous section: your post enters a warzone of posts, where the best one wins. How successful is your battle and how many people you’ll reach of course depends on the relevance of your content for a potential user.

Imagine owning an e-commerce shop with bio products and you wish to tell your potential customer Anja, a student of pharmacology, that you’re offering 30% discount on the entire purchase. Anja is on Facebook every day, from around 8 P.M. and 11 P.M., since classes keep her busy during the day. In the past, Anja has visited your website several times, while also visiting 3 sites with similar bio products from the competition. At 8 P.M., you post the news about current discounts on Facebook and hope Anja sees it. When you post your news, it goes on some sort of virtual auction with similar posts, posted around that time – an auction filled with other “providers”. If the competition posts competitive posts around the same time as you, you have less of a chance that she’ll see your post. So what to do?

According to a research by the online platform Buzzsumo, the level of engagement is highest between 10 P.M. and midnight, because that is the time with the lowest amount of content, which can more easily be seen by users on Facebook. Research shows that visiting the platform Facebook is the last thing the majority of Facebook users do before going to sleep.

The level of engagement and the number of published posts according to the time of posting

#6 Speculation: Facebook may recognize individual keywords.

The controversy about whether Facebook also takes into account certain keywords when it comes to engagement has been around for years and Facebook has not yet officially confirmed that the news feed chooses posts according to their keywords. However, some experiments have been made and, according to the results, we can conclude that certain keywords can nonetheless positively influence the post’s reach. Have you ever wondered why you never miss a post about someone graduating, even though you haven’t contacted that person in a very long time or why you never miss a prize game by one of the pages you liked but never visited? Posts that get a lot of similar comments in a very short time, e.g. “congratulation”, “I’m participating”, etc., get a larger reach because of that.

#7 Fact: Organic reach of business pages is declining.

If you own a business Facebook page, you probably started it with the intention of promotion. Those of you who have been running your page for a few years now have probably noticed a decreased interaction of your followers with your posts. And no, you’re not the only one.

What’s the reason for this decrease? Facebook is steadily expanding and at the same time becoming saturated with a high amount of business pages and their content. A lot of posts are therefore simply “lost” or overlooked. This phenomenon is therefore completely normal; research shows that the percentage of reach fell in the last couple of years from 16% to 6%. In practice, this means that a post from a page with 10,000 followers is seen by approximately 650 people. These are average values that differ according to the type of page and the public.

The level of organic reach of Facebook business pages

#8 More likes doesn’t mean a larger reach – especially when they are bought.

If you’ve been carefully reading this article, it is probably clear why buying likes doesn’t make any sense for Facebook business pages. If you thought it would build your credibility, think again. Which page would you trust more: a page with posts with good engagement but with only 1000 followers or a page with 30,000 followers but with posts with no engagement? The reason for bad interaction is the fact that the percentage of reach a page has reaches the wrong people; people who liked a page but who never return to it because they’re not really interested.
If you decide to advertise your Facebook page with the intention of getting likes, it is important that you start advertising thoughtfully or leave that to an expert. Only then can you precisely target your ads and that way get quality contacts with the potential of later on turning from visitors to buyers.

#9 With paid posts to a better reach, recognition and greater sales.

Facebook is one of the cheaper advertising tools that offers countless options of targeting, intended for distributing content and for advertising individual products and services. It can help you increase the reach of content among your followers and you can also reach those who don’t know your business yet but might like what you’re offering. Nowadays, practically everyone is on Facebook and it would be a shame if you didn’t use the most widespread social media to your advantage and, with it, build the recognition of your brand and, consequently, increase sales.

#10 Everyone can advertise, but that doesn’t make them an expert.

All you need to advertise on Facebook is to be an administrator of a page. But if you wish to be successful in your advertising, you shouldn’t leave anything to chance. It would be a shame if you used a wrong approach and unnecessarily spent all your budget. Even though hiring an agency to run your advertising may appear to be the more expensive option, it could turn out to be an investment that will more than pay off. When choosing an agency, make sure that they are advertising through your Facebook account. This way, you will be left with all the data and statistics at the end of advertising. You can therefore analyze them and apply them to future campaigns.

Summary

Facebook is an advertising tool that gives great results at a low price, but only under the condition that advertising is done right. Do you have the time and energy to create 50 different versions of ads? Do you have the patience to test all those ads so you can keep only the ones that deliver results? Do you know how to create and segment custom audiences and analyze the effects of the campaigns? If you think this is too much for you, we’d advise you to find an experienced team that will take care of that. Here you can check how we go about preparing Facebook campaigns.

Optiweb takes care of all that and more: we listen to your wishes and use our experience to advise you how to use your advertising budget wisely. All you need to do is entrust us with your project and we’ll make sure your investment turns a profit. :)

Nataša Ravnikar

You won’t find Nataša in our offices anymore, but we know that no matter where she is now, she is doing a phenomenal job. We’ve kept a piece of them with us as a memory. :)