The Facebook algorithm is the set of rules that determine what posts appear at the top of users’ newsfeed and who has priority in terms of organic reach. As you certainly noted, over the years business pages kept losing organic reach. By last year, only approximately 5.5% of the followers of a page see its posts, if they are not boosted.
The New Facebook Algorithm Keeps Hacking Up Organic Reach
While the Facebook Team will continue to prioritise content posted by friends over pages, at least now you know what you are up against. For the first time since its launch in 2004, Facebook decided to explain its users how its algorithm works.
In this article, we will explain to you what influences the visibility of posts and what you can do to increase the odds for organic reach. In general, the trend of the Facebook algorithm stays the same: pages will lose priority over content shared by private accounts (the users’ friends). And meaningful engagements will have priority over other metrics in determining the hierarchy of Facebook posts.
How Does the New Facebook Algorithm Work?
The most recent update to the algorithm that establishes the ranking of posts takes into account four factors:
- inventory
- signals
- predictions
- score
Let us analyse each of them and see how they work.
- The Inventory
This element represents all the possible placements of content on the Facebook interface. It includes the right and left side columns and the newsfeed. This is the first level of assigning a specific post, either from a personal account or from a publisher. As you know by now, the right side column is usually the placement for ads (paid content).
- Signals
The signals represent the only element of the Facebook algorithm that the publisher (the page) can control). Signals represent: type of content (image, video, link), the purpose of the content, and the popularity of the post (likes, shares, comments).
- Predictions
The predictions are based on the user’s past behaviour with respect to various types of content. Thus, if a user usually spends more time watching videos and then liking and commenting on them, the predictive ranking will prioritise videos for that user. If the user’s most frequent engagements are with links, this type of post will have priority for that specific user.
- Score
The score is similar to the Google page rank in the understanding of the new Facebook algorithm. Each post will be given a score according to the likelihood that users will react to it in a positive manner.
How to Make the Facebook Algorithm Work for You
According to Facebook, its top priority for 2020 is to create “meaningful engagements” between users. The Facebook Team will be more proactive in fighting:
- Fake news
- Hate speech
- Prohibited/restricted content
- Spam.
Thus, you should focus on creating and sharing content that is genuine, informative, helpful and entertaining. More than ever, you need to keep your followers engaged in order to generate positive signals and predictions for your posts. The most valuable types of signals are the actions taken by users: comments, replies, likes and shares.
As we have written on several occasions, video continues to be the content format with the highest level of engagements. This means that you need to learn how to turn your content into visual stories and find an efficient way to keep creating new videos on a constant basis.
Last but not least, strive to provoke conversations with your posts. Ask questions, provoke your followers to share their thoughts, encourage them to debate and to keep the dialogue going. This will help your posts get a higher rank from the Facebook algorithm and also get to know your customers better in order to offer them products and services they need.