While Facebook does not require brands to pay to get posts in front of fans, it does require a ton of cleverly crafted content to break through the social network’s scoring algorithm, EdgeRank. EdgeRank is the Facebook algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user's news feed.
The goal of Facebook's EdgeRank is to decide which content is MOST relevant for individual fans of the Page and serve up that content to them. So, if a fan always or frequently engages with the Page's content, that fan is most likely to get all or most of the Pages posts through their personal news feed.
Although the exact way EdgeRank works is top secret, Facebook openly discusses its continuing optimization of the news feed with the goal of showing only the posts that people are most likely to engage with. Facebook’s stated goal is that all brand content should be as engaging as friends’ posts.
The fans who don't engage with any of the Page's posts, will not receive that Page's content in their personal news feed. The more the Page's content is shared, liked and commented on, the more likely it is to be fed through ALL or MOST of its fans' newsfeeds.
It is estimated that only a tiny percent of posts make it into an individual’s newsfeed, which means that most of your fans never see your Page's posts. Your Page’s posts are competing with potentially MILLIONS of others.
Most Pages have only a small percentage of fans visit the Page, so most see the brands’ content ONLY through their news feed. If a Page would like to guarantee its posts show up in its fans news feeds, the only way to do that is to pay to promote the post through a Facebook ad unit.
Next week we will provide tips for creating content that helps engage your Page's fans.
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Featured Photo Credit: Farooq Aries