Facebook Pages Experiencing Less Reach With Revised EdgeRank

Many artists and/or their social media management teams have
surely noticed a drop in their Facebook “average reach” over the past
several weeks. The reason is because Facebook has made some dramatic
adjustments in its EdgeRank algorithm recently, worsening the performance of
artist/brand pages on the social network. Unique impressions have fallen
across the board (organic, paid and viral reach), meaning that artists and brands must adapt to ensure that their time and effort is well
spent moving forward with the revised EdgeRank.

Why The Change?

Given that more people than ever before are now on Facebook
(1 billion monthly active users), more users are Liking more pages and thus
receiving more content in their feed
from brands in addition to the content from their friends. Additionally, brands and
businesses have been reportedly posting three
times more content than they did just six months ago, which leaves many
fighting for news feed real estate.

Impressions naturally declined as a result, which is why
Facebook introduced the Promoted posts feature for page owners to pay and ensure
that as many people see their content as possible. A clogged news feed isn’t
exactly ideal for an enjoyable user experience, so the revised EdgeRank algorithm
is now making room for more Promoted posts and new users / brands.

Social media and digital analytics company Socialbreakers
recently conducted a study of how organic reach has changed with this new
EdgeRank algorithm. Interestingly enough, the total number of organic post
impressions has remained relatively stable (July 1st – October 9th), yet one can
clearly notice when the new algorithm was introduced with a sharp decline occurring in late September.

Click image to enlarge:

Engagement Matters
More Than Ever

Facebook says they optimize the news feed “to show users the
posts they are most likely to engage with, where engagement is defined as
clicking, liking, commenting, or sharing the post – or in the case of offers,
claiming the offer”.

In order to ensure that your posts are seen by more people,
it is critical to make them engaging enough to draw as many likes, comments,
and above all, as many shares as possible.

Visual content generally does well among users, so consider
posting pictures that offer some value that would compel a fan to share it. Be
sure to keep your captions short and introduce a call-to-action of some sort (pose a
question, ask them to share, provide a link, etc). Videos also work well in
this regard. For those big important posts, like tour date announcements or new music releases, consider forking over the dough and running a Promoted posts campaign to ensure that you reach the most amount of fans possible.

Bottom line: The more that your fans engage with your content, the better
it is for your overall EdgeRank score and the more likely your posts will
appear in their news feed over time. Finding the perfect storm of compelling content fused with well-timed
posts will be critical to getting the most ROI out of your Facebook efforts. Just ensure that you’re monitoring your Facebook Insights
regularly enough to figure out what is working, and what is not.

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