Facebook Marketing Success

I’ll be honest. I am getting so tired of reading article after article of people writing about how marketing on Facebook is a waste of time. Whether you are a B2C or B2B company it doesn’t matter. If you are not getting results from Facebook you need to change your strategy plain and simple. While it does take a bit of time, effort and budget there is no doubt Facebook is effective and should be at or near the top of your company’s digital marketing plan.


Tips for creating a successful Facebook page:

1. Understand Facebook’s EdgeRank System
If you want to be successful using anything you need to first learn how to use it. By creating new posts that best follow the EdgeRank criteria you can guarantee that it will be seen by the most possible people. Updates are key: post regularly, include videos, photos and links, have clear call to actions, and post content relevant to your audience. Essentially, the more engagements your post get the longer they stay in the news feed. (read more here: How to EdgeRank)

2. Content is Still King
It all comes down to producing good content. No one is going to engage with your posts and you will have trouble building a quality Facebook community if you are not consistently posting content that is relevant and interesting to your network. No, this does not include posting cute puppy pictures or grumpy cat photos. Those tactics are short lived and will not provide long term Facebook success. Plus that is not what your company is about so why post it? It is good to mix in some funny posts or off topic items once in a while, but you will want to make sure the majority of your posts are related to your company or industry.

3. Sponsored and Promoted Posts
Going the free route will only take you so far. Sometimes it helps to get a little boost by trying out the Facebook paid advertising options. If you have a smaller budget try out the Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. These two options keep users on Facebook rather than sending to external sites and this is the preferred method of Facebook. Sponsored stories are great since those are essentially word of mouth recommendations from friends. So if a friend checks in somewhere or ‘Likes’ a page your brand can sponsor those posts so their friends will also see and be likely to ‘Like’ it as well. Promoted Posts are also great when you have an important announcement or content that you want the most amount of people to see and engage with. This option allows you to stay at the top of news feeds longer and when people engage with it their friends will also see it as well.

4. Test, Test and Test!
In marketing you can never keep doing the same thing over and over again. You have to constantly switch things up and test your strategies and Facebook is no different. Test different kinds of posts between text, pictures, video, links, polls etc… See which one’s your followers enjoy engaging with more and also what kind of topics resonate most with them. When you try out the paid advertising options test out different budgets, tactics and see which ones provide the best results. Over time you will find the winning formula that works best for your brand or company.

To me there is no doubt Facebook is a viable and effective advertising option that should not be ignored. Next time you read an article about how it does not work for someone don’t jump to conclusions - give it a fair shot, it will pay off!

How to EdgeRank

Ever wondered how Facebook always seem to know what´s best for you, and how to target you for those ads just you want? If this algorithm (left) is clear to you, then you can stop reading now. If not, here’s how to decipher this important calculation. 

The method has been dubbed “Facebook's Edge Rank”, and is an algorithm that determines what content appears in users' news feed. An Edge is basically everything that "happens" in Facebook. Examples of Edges would be status updates, comments, likes, and shares.

Facebook looks at everything published - status updates, links, images, video etc. - as "objects." Each object then receives an over-all point-ranking (an EdgeRank if you may), determines whether the object will be displayed in the user's personal news feed. An object's EdgeRank is based on several factors, where only three factors are officially known: the relationship between the creator and the user, the interaction with the object (how many likes, comments, etc.) and immediacy (time-decay parameter).

Affinity: is a one-way relationship between a User and an Edge.

Weight: is a value system created by Facebook to increase/decrease the value of certain actions within Facebook.

Time-Decay: refers to how long the Edge has been alive; the older it is the less valuable it is.

Objects with high EdgeRank appear in the "Top News" feed. Objects with low EdgeRank may not appear at all. Unlike Google's PageRank, which remains the same from user to user, each EdgeRank is based on the individual Facebook users who may (or may not) see the object in their news feed.

If a Brand generally has low EdgeRank objects, then the Brand's updates will be seen by less people. This means that their Facebook marketing budget is less effective than it could be. Brands that are succeeding with high EdgeRank objects are leveraging their Facebook budget by multitudes. The difference between leveraging and being punished by EdgeRank is substantial, and your brand will ultimately be judged by your ability to engage your content. Some Brands have natural success such as the NBA and NFL due to their media rich content, and highly engaged audience.

Tracking your EdgeRank is vital to anyone who wants to run a Facebook marketing campaign, since it is probably the only way to get an actual reading on the campaign’s penetration. Combining EdgeRank with a strong Analytics monitoring will yield a successful Facebook campaign!

Heres a quick tutorial: