Hacking the Facebook newsfeed algorithm

Lesson Details:

Hi guys I'm excited that we've reached three point four so welcome this is hacking the news feed algorithm so by hacking I mean optimizing our content and actions based on the factors that we know in the news feed algorithm in order to optimize the placement of our edges in our Facebook fans news feeds and therefore get more engagement and more exposure for every single status update that we make so the following strategies that have put together are optimized to hack multiple news feed algorithm components at the same time so three point three the last segment was to get an understanding of the news feed algorithm components if you don't have a strong understanding of these components it'd be great if you could watch that again so you know what I'm referring to when I talk about them in this segment if you already do have a strong understanding let's check out our strategies to hack these algorithm components so here are the components on the left they should look familiar time decay weight affinity last actor story bumping and global interactions up the top here are our strategies there's seven on the seven of them which I'm going to go through so posting an optimal time optimizing your edge type encourage your interaction on your post space your edges strong edge anchoring being active and having great content are all really really important strategies to employ to ensure your content gets the most engagement and most exposure possible let's break them down one by one so optimal time or posting at an optimal time will optimize for the time decay the last actor and the global interaction factors of your update so the hack the time decay we want to make sure we post all edges at optimal times this is generally when most people are actually online so that your content can be seen by more people before the time decay becomes too strong and people don't see your update because it was posted too long ago and is now competing with all this new and fresh content it's actually really fascinating how QuickTime decay affects your status update on average so this is an average and it'll be unique for every update so in the first 20 minutes after posting your edge your edge will be seen by 45% of the total amount of people that will see this edge for example if you see if you person edge that a thousand people will end up seeing forty five percent of them on average or four hundred and fifty we'll see that we'll see this edge within the first 20 minutes within the next 20 minutes so a total of 40 minutes another 30 percent will see it and on almost another 15 within the next 20 minutes after that therefore one hour after posting your edge more than ninety percent of people on average will have seen it and only ten percent of people are left to see it I hope that makes sense so that person the optimal time therefore is very very important and eventually you'll finally exact optimal times to post for your page using insights because every page will be different but because our Facebook page is new and we don't have insights that will help us yet let's have a look at the general guidelines for posting the general best times as follows 7:00 a.m. when your fans are waking up 1:00 p.m. when your fans are generally on lunch break and checking into Facebook 5:00 p.m. which will be coming home from work or getting out of work logging off their computers and 9:00 p.m. winding down at the end of the day going to bed or just relaxing also there is a lot of conflicting data based on what day is best to is best to post on I'm gonna be suggesting you post every day but the most important updates I would post generally towards the end of the week this is when I personally and a lot of other research points to getting more engagement and attention here's an interesting strategy to consider as well it's very very important to consider edge competition because the more posts the more pages that post at the same time means the more competition there is for visibility of your edge as you can remember they're up to 1,500 or more stories available to be seen in everyone's newsfeed at once at a peak time this number will increase an off-peak obviously this number will decrease therefore if you are posting at optimal times you have more competition to compete for the top 40 spots so try experimenting by posting your ads just before peak time this is one I find it the most beneficial so what this does is it allows time to build momentum for your status and have a high global interaction before peak time and Pete dump competition occurs here's a graph here's the peak time here at 9 a.m. I normally jump anomaly login about his hours probably too early about 8:15 maybe 8:30 and post in here as the competition is getting higher sneak in there get your global interactions and your momentum up so that when 9 a.m. or 9:30 occurs you have very strong score and will appear most likely in the top 40 edges on a significant amount of your fans news feeds so you also want to make sure you're optimizing your edge type in order to take advantage of the time decay the weight and the affinity factors so each type of content has a different purpose and they even have a different visibility ranking based on each individual user as we went through in 3.3 so just to refresh a status with our link is on the left and a text status is on the right let's have a look at some data and some stats to help optimize your content so a status versus status with the link is displayed below it was found that a status with a link receives 153 percent more likes 204 percent more comments and 184 percent more shares so if you put a link with your status you're going to get more interaction on average another thing to consider with status updates is the shorter the text generally the higher interaction as you can see here at 250 character update gets a hundred and sixty percent of the interaction of a 400 character update this starter is comparing a status Versa photo Versa album so status is the baseline the photo usually gets a photo on average gets 120 percent more interaction and album surprisingly gets a hundred and eighty percent more interaction than the status and the photo however don't take these stats on face value and ensure that you're posting a variety of content to cater for individual weights of all of your fans and also the device preferences and the content that they're more likely to show encourage interaction is a really important strategy to employ and I do it all the time and it is very very beneficial for increasing my exposure and increasing the engagement on every post it'll optimize for your affinity your last actor your story bumping and your global interactions so using call to actions questions and engaging content to stimulate conversation and interaction on your edge updates will ultimately get you more views I'm actually gonna focus the entire next segment on how to have the most engaging updates possible including covering all these things highlighted in orange so I'm not gonna go too deep into it now just realize that more interaction equals more views and again more views will equal more interaction and in return that will give you more views it is a cycle between views and interaction so using edge spacing is very beneficial in optimizing your affinity and your last actor factors that rhymes by logically spacing your updates it is easy to capitalize on last actor as you remember the last 50 actions that a user has made and further increase your affinity score with each individual fan so although the average Facebook user makes less than 50 actions every day if you can space your edges 5 hours apart the last actor scores will be even stronger than your fellow 24 hours because they would be ranked higher up in the last actor rankings so another way to use this knowledge is its fans obviously aren't making actions while they sleep so it's actually really easy to rank high on last actor scores when you post in the morning if you've had interaction from this user the previous night strong edge anchoring is almost a continuation of this strategy it'll also optimize for affinity last actor and new global interactions edge anchoring is based around the idea that if somebody interacts once on your update their affinity score with your page is strongly increased therefore the more likely they are to see your next edge update because they've interacted on your last if you build enough anchors which is an interaction with each status you're gonna create a strong relationship and always be seen with this individual user for every update that you post another way to use this is to capitalize on strong edges or updates if you create a strong edge or a status with high interaction that goes relatively viral either within your fan base or even further than that extending your reach always draft of this for higher visibility on your next post so say you've got 500 likes on a status which is twice what you normally get you then have very strong affinity and very strong last actor scores for these 500 people therefore if you post another status really close to this first status those 500 people are almost a hundred percent likely to see this being active on your status is huge it's gonna optimize story bumping and global interactions let me show you how so being active on your own status creates activity it encourages more interaction and more activity on your status which obviously counts as global interaction and will boost your visibility and engagement of your status so therefore you should always like your own status as you can see here I'm achieved great I'm I'm logged in as my achieve greatness account and I've like my own status why because it counts towards your global interactions as you can remember as you can remember Facebook testing your status out with sample sizes your like and your comments will count towards this initial sample size and therefore be more likely to be seen by more people you should also like appropriate comments on your status so somebody here has posted a quote on my status any brand well that is and I've liked that because it increases the engagement and the activity on my status which increases my global interactions and therefore my status is shown to more people because Facebook see it more valuable because they have seen high interaction on the status another way to improve this is to reply and ask questions to stimulate even more conversation on that same status so I've replied to Andy Bramwell and I said this is great where is it from Andy then as you can see underneath this reply goes on to answer the question again increasing interaction and engagement and popularity of my status giving it a higher value in Facebook's eyes and finally the best strategy of all is great content content is absolutely king when it comes to hacking the news feed algorithm it's gonna optimize for your weight your affinity your last actor your story bumping and your global interactions so put simply content is king if you're trying to work around the algorithm the bottom line is if your content is poor your engagement will be poor and so your visibility so if you have great content it'll be the opposite of this you have high visibility high interaction and they'll go through that views and engagement loop showing more and more people your update here are some questions Facebook asks page owners to consider to find out if their content is great or if their content is poor so let's have a look at these is this timely in relevant content is the content from a source that you would trust would you share it with your friends or recommend it to others is the content genuinely interesting to you or is it trying to game news feed distribution eg asking people to like the content would you call this low-quality post or mean would you complain about seeing this content in your newsfeed if you answer these questions you'll find out how good your content is and how and how much of Facebook value your content.