Are You wasting Your Time on Facebook?
Godfrey Parkin, June 2011
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There is a common misconception that whatever you say on your Facebook Page status updates appears on the walls of everyone who has Liked your Page. The reality is that hardly any of what you post on your Page will ever appear on the walls of your fans – they only get to see what Facebook’s algorithm thinks they will engage with. And if the average Facebooker is there for only 20 minutes a day (1.4% of the day) the chances of your posted content being seen is minimal.
How minimal? 0.2% of friend objects actually get posted to a fan’s wall, of which they see 1.4%. That means any individual may get to see only 0.003% of what’s being posted within their chosen circle of friends and fan Pages. Given that they may simply scan the wall in under a second, and may never scroll to see earlier posts, the probability of being engaged by updates from a Facebook Page is remote – especially if having Liked the Page they never return to it (9 out of 10 Likers do not).
Why don’t your updates get onto the walls of your fans? Facebook wants to ensure that its users have a relevant and compelling experience, and that they are not drowned in boring or annoying wall posts. They want to be sure that every “object” someone sees on their wall will be interesting to them. Just as e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com will show you items that you are more likely to buy, based on their profile of your past behaviour, Facebook knows what each users past behaviour has been and is able to leverage that knowledge to filter and personalise their experience. Facebook also has a more commercial agenda, because they want users to spend time on the page, exposing them to advertising they are likely to click.
The Facebook engine that decides what objects will appear on a person’s wall (called the EdgeRank algorithm) has three main components – affinity, weight and age. Affinity is a measure of how closely a person follows a friend or a Page, and is measured by how frequently that person visits and engages with content on that page, by commenting, liking or posting. Weight measures how substantial the engagement is – playing a video or looking at a photo takes more time than clicking a Like button. It keeps the user on the page longer, and increases the chances of them clicking on an advertisement. The age of the posted item plays a big factor as well – Facebook doesn’t want to show old news on a user’s wall, because they are unlikely to be interested in it. There is probably a fourth factor (but I’m speculating here), and that is the availability of advertising that is contextually relevant to the post. That’s what I would do if I had access to Facebook’s insight engines.
So, all of these manic Facebook marketers constantly updating their statuses with brand-centric announcements, and congratulating themselves on the size of their fan-base, are wasting their time. Or are they? Yes, unless a fan is continuously liking and commenting on what you put on your Page, your updates are effectively invisible.
You can increase your chances of appearing on the fan’s wall by making sure your Page is continually refreshed with unique, relevant, compelling content, dynamic conversations, and bait that attracts active engagement. You should probably also be a Facebook advertiser, running ads that contain contextually targeted keywords (but, again, I’m speculating). The EdgeRank system works only in one direction, so it is your fan engaging on your Page that pumps up the ranking of your content for that individual – you can’t make your content rank better by liking the fan’s photos or commenting on his or her status updates. It’s nice to feel smug about having hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans, but unless you are really a friend that they choose to check in with constantly, you actually don’t exist.
But those thousands of Likers are a red herring, a distraction from the true strategic value of what you are doing:
Firstly, in no social network, digital or otherwise, will you find more than a handful individuals who would unreservedly sing your praises or even take a bullet for you. There is another group of fans who really feel part of your inner community and will engage with you regularly. But it is rare for these two inner circles to exceed ten percent of your network – and with large fan bases it’s more typically under two percent. The rather rough 1-9-90 rule of thumb says you have 1% true friends, 9% community participants and 90% “lurkers” but your Facebook engagement statistics will give you a clearer picture for your own fan base. The two inner circles are your most valuable communication assets, and they will also be the people who see your posts. You have to have strategies to leverage these two groups. It’s not who you know that matters, it’s who they know!
Secondly, engaging with social media forces you as a marketer to become human, to think of your customers as real people, individuals, and to look at their world, their issues and their needs from hugging distance – not from the helicopter view of traditional market research, or the ROI perspective of corporate management. Here lies the true value of social network marketing: nothing could be healthier for your brand or your business than to have the people responsible for managing it continuously, intimately engaged with their customers as a trusted, valued conversation partner, listening to needs, understanding perceptions, and being equipped to respond rapidly to shifts in the competitive landscape.