How To Manipulate And Win The Facebook Algorithm

If “content is king”, then the Facebook Algorithm is the crown. Without the crown, the king is just another crazy person, roaming the streets, swearing they are important enough to demand the attention of others. Now, if that metaphor doesn’t make sense, don’t blame yourself! I’ll be more clear; understanding how the Facebook Algorithm works will help you to improve the opportunity of success for your business.

Why is the Facebook Algorithm so important? It’s the automated machine that runs in the background of every Facebook account and determines what content each user should see and who’s content will get shown. If you are notorious for producing high engagement, native to Facebook, consistently good quality content, you are sending positive signals to the Facebook Algorithm that you are trustworthy and thus deserve more opportunity to show up on those interested users' Facebook news feed. Produce and share bad content and Facebook’s Algorithm will learn that you’re not providing a very positive experience and will start to limit your engagement opportunities. 

That’s a long-winded set up, but I promise you that I’ve scoured the internet for other people's opinions and mixed them with my own to present to you a completely subjective, however it was compiled, list of ways that you can improve your social media profile. Remember: although this is specific to Facebook, the same general audience, human beings, are using all social media platforms. In other words, there are a lot of bits of information you can take from here and implement on all of your social platforms.

For those of you still with me, bless you. Here is a list of tactics to help manipulate the Facebook Algorithm in your favour.

Pay Attention To Your Audience

Facebook is rich with insights. The way modern marketing platforms attempt to differentiate themselves from one another is by the ability to segment audiences and how accurate or niche they can be. 

Taking a look through your Insights tab on your Facebook Page can be extremely helpful in understanding who your audience is and what content of yours they enjoy. The overview displays 7 days, 28 days, or Current (Today) and Previous (Yesterday) time range options so you can get a couple of different perspectives on how your current efforts are working. 

You can see how many people are viewing your page, the number of new followers you amassed, how many people your posts are reaching, the amount of engagement they are receiving, and even the rate of response that you are providing to engaged followers.

Diving into your post data can reveal to you some ideas as to how to adjust your current strategy to continue to provide your followers with what they enjoy most while ensuring that they understand exactly what it is your business is offering. Statistics for demographics such as age, gender, country, city, and language are all available under the People section of your Insights tab. Understanding the best time of day when a majority of your audience is online provides a guideline to when you should be posting. There is even an option to follow competitor pages. This allows you to see how your posts and engagement match up to theirs. 

The value that you can get from your Insights section is dependant on the followers and engagement your page and posts receive and have. If you don’t have many followers or your posts aren’t getting much engagement, those are two bad signals that the Facebook Algorithm will use to determine your content is less valuable than your competition.

Share Great Content & Engage With Your Community

It’s obvious, right, but sharing quality content that produces engagement is what really matters. If people are showing the Facebook Algorithm that they are interested in what you are producing, either by viewing or sharing or commenting or reacting or clicking the link, however they chose to engage, that action produces a very good signal to the Facebook Algorithm that what you’re doing is worth your audiences time.

High-quality content is not necessarily professional video or photo work; sometimes it can be sharing a very intimate or candid moment from your personal life or your business. Another term could be high engagement content. This can be as simple as presenting a unique way to start a conversation in the comments section of your post. It could be sharing a kind message that reflects your company's values and morals to produce likes and other reactions. When we are referring to high-quality content in regards to the Facebook Algorithm, we are talking about content that people are highly engaging with.

All that being said, high-quality video content is by far the best way to engage with your audience and stand out from your competition. When you produce an eye-catching video that has the ability to capture your audience's attention you are more likely to win them over and continue that digital conversation that will lead them to provide real-world results. 

• Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users
• Sixty-four percent of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos
• Social video generates 12 times more shares than text and images combined

Those stats above are why video is such a great Facebook Algorithm manipulator. 

Obviously, revenue growth is exciting. The nearly two-thirds of consumers who purchase because of the branded video is also alarming. However, in terms of manipulating the Facebook Algorithm, if people are sharing your content on their personal news feeds, that sends an excellent signal to Facebook that your post is worth their time, so much so that they want their friends and family to see it. And that’s what Facebook’s Algorithm is all about now—making sure you see more content from those closest to you.

Another obvious but important task to include is engaging and replying with followers AS your Facebook page. 

When people ask questions, reply in the comments so that others are able to read. If someone seems upset in a comment, don’t delete it; instead, replying with empathy and understanding can show your followers that you care about providing a great customer experience. And finding a way to contribute to online Facebook groups or other community pages as your Facebook Business Page is a great way to show your company off to an already interested audience which will help to increase your page’s reach-ability. 

Use Paid Promotion

Gone are the days when you can share something and it will organically spread like wildfire. With the 2018 Facebook Algorithm update, the ability for your business to reach audiences was diminished by more than half of whatever it used to be.

Today, even if you produce great content, there is a threshold that your organic posts will not be able to push past. It will be different for each business, depending on their audience, but it exists for us all. 

Boosting a post is a simple way to reach out to audiences outside of our following audience, or to ensure that our content reaches everyone who is currently following our business's Facebook page. You can create and target audiences just like the Facebook Ads Business Manager options, however, it’s a much more fast and streamlined way to use paid promotion in general.

The other option is something I just mentioned. Setting up and using a Facebook Ads Business Manager account will allow you to create very lucrative funnels that provide both direct and indirect revenue as well as valuable business intelligence via the Facebook Pixel.

Even though you are paying for them, the engagement you receive from these paid promotions will contribute to your Facebook page's rank as the entire network uses a holistic approach to determine how valuable your content is on all aspects of the Facebook platform, including Instagram.

Set aside some budget for paid promotion or digital advertising and take some time to create audiences outside of those who are currently following you, either by making lookalikes of that current audience or selecting from a list of preset options arranged by the… (you guessed it) Facebook Algorithm!

Here are some other quick tips to help you win over the Facebook Algorithm:

• Encourage your employees, family, friends, and brand advocates to share your content or tag your Facebook page in their posts—remember, it’s always a good sign if people are organically sharing your business with their network
• Post often—the Facebook Algorithm is like a jealous lover, so make sure they always “know where you are” by being as frequent as you can with high quality, highly engaging content

• Visit your posts once a week and invite all users who liked (or otherwise reacted) to your posts, to follow your Facebook page. It’s a simple one-click button next to their name that says “Invite”. Click it and they will get a notification inviting them to follow your Facebook page.
• Update your Facebook Business page routinely; quarterly, for the seasons, special dates, upcoming holidays, Black Friday weekends, etc.—use your profile picture and Facebook page cover to keep things current and fresh.
• Encourage user-generated content, either through contests, continual surprise prizes to loyal followers or by sharing their content with your own audience—this will naturally help to keep people excited about producing content about your business
• Share exclusive Facebook content—promotions, sales, events, etc. that can only be found on Facebook will increase your followers so that they won’t miss your exclusive options. The more followers you have, the more chance they will engage with your content.
• Import your Facebook contacts—if you have a large email database, you can invite them to follow your page or create lookalike audiences to target for when you boost or use paid promotion on your posts
• Try to ask questions rather than ask for engagement—provoke a conversation or response in your comments without directly asking your followers to reply in the comments below. For example, “What do you think about X?” instead of, “Leave your thoughts in the comments below!” (a simple difference, but an easy one to miss!)
• Post natively to Facebook—if you are producing content that continues to bring people off of Facebook and to external links on other webpages, etc. you are in a sense “removing” users from the Facebook platform. For obvious reasons, Facebook’s Algorithm would prefer they stay on the Facebook platform. If you are able to, try to upload your content right onto Facebook and link only when necessary.

Alexander Johnson, Director of Campaigns, Agency Media