Stats from Edge Rank Checker (I know, never heard of them either) suggest that the new Facebook status feed benefits big brands much more than smaller ones. A month after the changes made to the Facebook status feed the stats show that while popular Pages with over 100,000 fans may be receiving 27.8% more engagement, small Pages with less than 5,000 fans may receiving equal Likes and comments than before, and those with under 1,000 fans have seen engagement drop 11.6%.
Now obviously if you're Facebook you could argue that this makes sense. After all, pages with lots of fans are effectively being endorsed by lots of people, therefore the content must be good and worth sharing. If you're looking to get a new page off the ground however it could well make things a bit harder for you.
The data is derived from a list of some 600 or so Edge Rank Checker clients, ie people that are investing a fair bit in the success of their Facebook Page. This news follows prior findings from Edge Rank showing that after the status feed change, whilst likes and comments were up, impressions were down across the board. What is perhaps worrying for Facebook marketers is that the median score for the pages included in the study found that:
- Impressions down 24%
- Likes down 15%
- Comments down 20%
Obviously there are more small Pages than large ones, so that will play a part, but what does appear clear is that with the new changes those Pages with large followings are doing much better than those without.
I 've 'liked' heaven knows how many pages that I was only very briefly interested in. Better opportunites to unlike pages mean I'll unlike more pages.
I know this is tangentially related to your summary. But I think this kind of stuff is still in transition
To be honest I think this makes sense. It's like Google and Page Rank. They want things to appear in news feeds that other people are finding interesting. One way to do that is the number of followers, plus I suspect things like the latest ' x are talking about this' stat will play a part too.
Thanks for sharing. So any suggestions on how to increase the people talking about you thing that we can increase engagement?
Hi Rachel, what\’s your page about?
@Rachel, try these
1. Post on anything that causes debate. Once someone has made a comment, they often feel compelled to check back to see who has replied to their comment. This has the potential to build a big discussion.
2. Ask for feedback. Remember that all your followers have actively chosen to follow you, so by asking for feedback you are helping them to feel more valued and part of the community.
3. Questions work well when you have a steady following. Photos with a question in the caption work even better. This gives you the opportunity to get both comments and opinions from our followers.
4. Avoid automatic posts. Internet users are now becoming more and more web savvy and their barriers are up even more. Automatic reposting of blog links will discourage people from your page. Your Facebook page should be social and a place to engage – not just another dull spamming tool. If you do choose to post blog links, make sure you do this manually and write questions or ask for opinions from your followers in the caption section.
5. Keep your page restrictions to a minimum to allow your community space to engage (by being able to upload their own pics for instance).
http://adage.com/article/digital/reach-beats-freq…
"Facebook's changes, announced at its F8 Developers Conference last month, appear to have boosted brands' visibility among more of their fans but decreased the frequency with which a brand's fans see its messages, according to a study of more than 300 brand pages by analytics firm PageLever. In what should be considered good news, the new layout has substantially increased fan interactions with brands.
"Facebook is showing you to more people but less often per person," said Jeff Widman, co-founder of PageLever. "I would say it's actually much better for brand pages now. As a marketer, I'd totally rather reach more people every single day" than the same people more often. "
I think that Facebook home pages are helping only the big ones. They tend to make them even bigger. I really hope that Facebook will also appreciate small Facebook groups.
Pingback: Why big brands really don’t get Facebook | Adi Gaskell says...