3 Ways Facebook’s EdgeRank Changes Will Make Your Fan Base Stronger

(If you know how to master content marketing)

 

In early December, Facebook made an announcement that it was going to be making some slight ‘tweaks’ to it’s EdgeRank algorithm. For those of you not in-the-know, EdgeRank is used to determine what content, of all of your friends and all of the pages you’ve liked, will actually show in your Newsfeed, and they didn’t just ‘tweak’ it… FB has made a complete 180°.

Over the last two year, and particularly since the purchase of Instagram for $1 Billion (yes, Billion with a B) in mid-2012, Facebook has outspokenly favored photos and memes in the news feed over other forms of content such as links, videos and of course, plain text updates.

In fact, in 2012, a study by SocialBakers reported that 85% of engagement came from photos. This was updated by SocialBakers in July of 2013 to show an increase… a whopping 93% of engagement was coming from photos:

The new changes to FB algorithm have been said to put a stronger emphasis on ‘high quality articles’ and less on memes (photos); a clear departure from the focus for the last two years.

In the short term, overall visibility of your Facebook Fan Pages, and thus engagement is likely to drop. A study from Ignite Social Media shows:

“..in the week since December 1, organic reach and organic reach percentage have each declined by 44% on average, with some pages seeing declines as high as 88%. Only one page in the analysis had improved reach, which came in at 5.6%.”

In the long term however, Facebook will become a far more effective way to build genuine community through relevant discussion and shared mission-driven experience rather than the shallow ‘engagement’ we’ve recently been witness to, through liking and sharing of meme after meme.

In other words, now more than ever is the best time for you to start focus on your content strategy. Facebook is literally inviting you to focus on higher quality content and share it through their platform.

There are 3 ways for you to leverage this opportunity to create a better content marketing strategy and a stronger fan base:

1. Understanding Your Niche is More Important than Ever

The key to any good content marketing strategy is understanding your niche – the intersection of your passion/ mission and your art. Once you understand that your your niche isn’t just ‘musician’ or ‘rock band’ but is ‘green, vegan rock band’ or ‘recovering addict turned inspirational musician’, you will be able to better target not only your target community of fans, peers and media makers on Facebook, but you’ll also have a stronger understanding of how to connect with them through high-quality content.

2. Create a More Consistent Experience Between Facebook, Twitter and Your Blog By Leveraging Your Content Strategy

Twitter has always been platform for niche discussions. However, Facebook was always the ugly elephant in the room, forcing you to stray away from the legitimate conversations taking elsewhere for the elementary engagement of ‘like my photo, share my photo, etc.’. The new emphasis on high-quality content allows you to extend the conversations being had on Twitter, with those who spend most of their time on Facebook.

3. Have You Started Blogging Yet? The Time is NOW!

If you’ve been neglecting your blog, there is no better time than now to get started with a strategy that allows you to explore your niche and expand upon your unique position within. For the first time in a long time, Facebook can be a good platform for you to share original, high-quality content that nurtures genuine discussion.

How have YOU been benefiting from the recent changes to Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm?

Share your recent experiences on Facebook with us in the form of a comment below. Have you felt the changes yet?Let us know!