Recently there has been all sorts of talk about the proper way to accomplish Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I wrote a blog article about it the other day.
Something interesting that’s been happening (in case people failed to notice) was that while people are still trying harder and harder to optimize Google searches (or just coming around to figuring out they should be), that’s exactly where people are spending less time at. In August 2010, CNet reported that more people were spending time on Facebook than on all of Google’s properties combined (including YouTube and GMail). This shouldn’t be a surprising statistic what with Facebook having about 500 million users and given the amount of time any particular user spends on its site.
So, the rage for the past year or so has been to talk about Social Media Marketing (SMM).
There are plenty of best practices, tips and techniques to make your fan page flourish… but that’s not what I want to talk about here.
Did you know that Facebook has an algorithm for what pieces of content get placed into a person’s “Top News” area?
If you don’t know what that is, the default view of the Facebook News Feed (where every user goes when they log in) is the “Top News”. Think of this as kind of a “greatest-hits” for the last 24 hours or so from all of their friends. Of course, you can manually then change the view from the “Top News” to “Most Recent”, which will show all of your friends posts.
So how do you – as a Facebook marketer – get YOUR content into a user’s “Top News”? – News Feed Optimization (NFO)
There’s an algorithm for that.
This slide is from a presentation give by Facebook engineers at the f8 developer conference.
What we have here is a definition of an “Edge Rank”.
Believe me when I say that I’m not a math freak or anything but essentially what this says is the following (short version):
- Everything on Facebook is an object – status updates, photos, links, video
- There are three factors that determine the “edge rank” your object is given which will determine the likelihood that it appears in your fans (or friends) “Top News” area.
- The first factor is the ‘affinity score’ between the user (your fan or friend) and creator (you). How much and how often does this person interact with you? Do they spend a lot of time on your fan page? What do they do while they’re there.
- The second factor is ‘weight’. Each type of object interaction is weighted. What type of interaction happened? a comment? a like? a tag? The more “interactive” the ..uh.. interaction, the more weight it has – so someone who actually types a comment is going to be interacting more than someone who clicks “like”.. this of course, gives more weight to the comment.
- The last factor is ‘time decay’ which is simply how much time has passed since your object was created.
Weights are not always evenly kept, FYI. When Facebook launches new services, those objects suddenly seem to be weighted more than others (ie. Facebook Places) so jumping onto new features and services does have advantages.
With the potential that Facebook may start sharing the “Like” data with Bing, the official release of Facebook’s Page Browser, Google indexing Facebook Pages, and the “Like” button’s viral adoption on the web… You may find it easier and easier to get lost in the crowd.. just as it is, right now, on Google Search.
Imagine, for a brief moment though….
What if you had started optimizing Google keyword searches for your business when Google first appeared?
You have that opportunity now with Facebook Pages, Like buttons and NFO.
What will you do with it?
