Making sure your Facebook posts get seen by your fans
Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 2:14PM 
Right, so you’ve shelled out on online ads, you’ve been giving tracks away in exchange for ‘likes’, and you’ve persuaded your mum, dad and the cat to follow you on Facebook. This sophisticated marketing campaign has led to thousands of people becoming your Facebook fan, so all you’ve got to do now is post a few updates on your page about your latest album / single / saucy t-shirt and this important news will go straight into a multitude of Facebook news feeds, right?
Er, no. It don’t work like that, and in this post we’re going to tell you why even your mum might miss your important update and what you can do to boost your chances of visibility in people's Facebook news feeds.
Top news versus recent news
You’ve probably noticed that on Facebook there are two types of news feeds: ‘top news’ and ‘most recent’. The more important of the two from a music marketing point of view (or indeed any marketing point of view) is the ‘top news’ feed, which is the default set of stories that users will see when they log into Facebook. However, Facebook is rather selective about what it considers top news, and as a musician, you need to understand how to tailor your posts to ensure that your blatant appeals for cash (sorry, album sales) get to your Facebook fans.
Essentially, an algorithm called ‘EdgeRank’ decides what’s top news or not. Like Google’s algorithm for search results, exactly how it works is a closely-guarded secret – but the social media gurus out there seem to agree that there are basically 3 factors that Facebook considers when deciding whether or not to put your posts in the top news feed.
Affinity: how often the page’s followers interact with the content that is being posted on the page.
Weight: certain interactions (likes, clickthroughs, comments etc.) on Facebook seem to carry more ‘weight’ than others. It’s not clear which interactions are most valuable but for the sake of argument, a comment on your band’s video might generate a greater weight than a ‘like’, and a share might be more important than a comment.
Time: The age of the post.
A simple explanation of all this is that Facebook gives an affinity, weight and time score to your post and multiplies these scores together to assign the EdgeRank. The higher the EdgeRank, the more likely it is that your post will appear in your fan’s top news feeds.
Top tips for boosting visibility of your Facebook posts
So what does this mean in practice? Well, the simple answer is this: always post content that will generate comments, shares and likes. But here are some more specific tips about how to do this:
1. Ask questions
People love to give an opinion, and even asking your fans what their favourite toothpaste is will probably generate a higher EdgeRank than a straightforward statement about the pain-au-chocolat you ate in the studio that morning. You can ask fans what track they’d like to hear you cover; what their favourite song of yours is; enquire which venue they’d like to see you play in and so on. All these sorts of questions will generate responses and help to nudge you gently into the top news.
2. Keep the conversation going
When you pose a question on Facebook, don’t just leave it at that; get involved in the conversation that ensues. If you ask your fans what cover they’d like you to do, and someone has a great suggestion, let them know that you think it’s a fantastic idea, and follow it up with another question (for example, “Cheers John – should I cover ‘More Than Words’ acoustically, or do it in a death-metal-two-step-shoegazing-nu-emo-grime fashion?”).
3. Communicate with photos and videos instead of text
Facebook seems to assign a greater ‘weight’ to photos and videos than to other content (probably because Facebook users explore and interact with them more often than text items), so try to prioritise images and videos over text. You might get one of your tracks into more ‘top news’ feeds, for example, by posting a little Youtube video of it (however basic) rather than providing fans with a link to an MP3 / Soundcloud clip.
4. Make your content relevant to current events
If you have a view on something that’s currently in the news – for example, a hugely important issue like Cheryl Cole’s latest haircut – it’s likely that your followers will, too. Phrase updates so that they involve something topical and you’ll find yourself getting a lot of engagement – which will help you pop up in fans' top news feed more easily (and more often).
More information about EdgeRank
As EdgeRank is currently a hotly discussed topic on the internet, you’ll find many articles out there about it. A couple of useful articles we spotted are as follows, however:
Good luck with your quest to get your posts in front of the masses. Incidentally, we hope that you’re reading this article after clicking on a link in a Facebook top news feed…
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