What to Do About
Changes to the Facebook Algorithm
By Giovanni
Gallucci
A weekly series
for Shane Media clients
Last week’s
article on Facebook must’ve made you feel like
someone walked past you and told you your cowboy
hat was on backwards. So much for all that time
and effort we put into Facebook, right? Well,
yes and no.
So what do we do
about the changes in Facebook’s algorithm?
First, learn what “reach” actually means.
Understanding the different levels of reach on
Facebook is critical.
Facebook reach is
the number of unique people who saw your
content. This is the umbrella that covers all
other metrics on the site. It includes
engagement, views, comments, likes, click-thrus
and any other feedback on both posts and pages,
whether they be organic, viral or paid.
Where should your
focus be? That rests on whether an individual
piece of content or event is most important to
you or whether you want to grow your overall
brand on Facebook. For an event, a video or a
single item, you need to focus on average “post”
reach. For your brand, focus on your organic
“page” reach.
You want as high
a viral reach number as you can get. This
indicates that your content is being shared on
Facebook outside your immediate fanbase. This
can include shares from both organic and paid
sources.
Second, change
how you view performance on Facebook. People
typically think about the percentage of reach as
the number of unique viewers vs. their total
number of fans. That’s not a realistic way to
look at it. Look at the graphic below from an
account with 22,500 fans.
This shows, in
the “DAYS” section, the average number of total
unique fans who logged onto Facebook during the
week. The graph below it, labeled as “TIMES”
shows us how many of those 17,500 fans are on
Facebook on average during each hour of the day.
We see that our
best hours for posting are between 11AM and 10PM
with most of our fans being online at 8PM. At
that time of the day we usually have just under
8,000 fans logged into Facebook.
If at any given
time only 7,000 of your 22,500 fans are actually
logged onto Facebook, it doesn't make any sense
to include those additional 16,000 users who
weren’t even logged in at the time you posted.
If a post reaches
500 people, don’t look at it as 2.2% reach (500
out of 22,500) but as 7.1% reach (500 out of
7,000). The 100% reach metric is from the pool
of 7,000 active, online fans at the time you
posted. That’s the yardstick you should be using
to measure your performance. This is critical
when you explain Facebook performance to others.
What else can you
do about the changes in Facebook’s algorithm?
Get off Facebook.
We’ll talk about
that next week.
ABOUT GIOVANNI
GALLUCCI:
Giovanni teaches how search, social, and online
media align with marketing and PR strategies. On
one hand, he's a recovering programmer turned
internet journeyman while on the other hand he
is a professional photographer, filmmaker, and
online content creator. Learn more about him at
http://LiveLoudTexas.com or follow him on
twitter: @giovanni
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