Understanding the 2023 Facebook Algorithm: Tips to Boost Your Content Reach

In 2023, Facebook's algorithm is more sophisticated and AI-powered than ever before. The platform has updated and changed the algorithm many times over the years, always with the goal of presenting users with the most relevant and valuable content for them. The algorithm uses various ranking factors to determine which content appears in the feeds. Understanding these ranking factors and how they interact can help businesses and marketers create effective campaigns that reach their target audiences on Facebook.

Every month, 2.7 billion people use Facebook, Meta’s globe-dominating social network. For marketers, this is an un-ignorable audience. However, reaching that audience isn’t always easy – to get content in front of a relevant user, they need to make the Facebook algorithm work in their favor.

Unfortunately, the algorithm can feel very mysterious. Why do some posts go viral with engagement while others wither and disappear without so much as a few courtesy likes?

Deciphering the Facebook Algorithm:

The Facebook algorithm is a hot topic — not just for social media marketers, but for journalists, the public, and even world leaders.

Whether you love it or hate it, the simple truth is you’ve got to work with it if you want your Facebook marketing efforts to succeed. Here, we explain everything you need to know about the algorithm Facebook uses to rank content and shape the feeds of its 2.93 billion users.

What is the Facebook algorithm?

The Facebook algorithm is a set of rules that rank content across the platform. It determines what people see every time they check Facebook, and in what order that content shows up. Facebook calls this “personalized ranking.”

Essentially, the Facebook algorithm evaluates every post, ad, Story, and Reel. It scores content and then arranges it in descending, non-chronological order of interest for each individual user. This process happens every time a user refreshes their feed.

Facebook says the social network uses algorithms to “arrange all of the content you could see on [the feed, Search, Marketplace, Groups, and Watch] with the aim of showing you the things we think you may be most personally interested in at the top of each surface.

How does the Facebook algorithm work?

Meta has a whole team of people working on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Part of their work is to improve the algorithms that connect Facebook users with the most valuable content for them.

Over the years, algorithm ranking signals have been added, removed, and had their importance adjusted.

As of 2023, the Facebook algorithm determines which content is most relevant to a particular user based on three main ranking signals:

1. Who posted it: You’re more likely to see content from sources you interact with, including friends and businesses.

2. Type of content: If you most often interact with video, you’ll see more video. If you engage with photos, you’ll see more photos. You get the idea.

3. Interactions with the post: The algorithm will prioritize posts with a lot of engagement, especially from people you interact with a lot.

Each post is ranked based on these main signals to determine where it appears in your feed.

Facebook also gives users options that help them train the algorithm and customize their feed:

• Favorites: You can select up to 30 people and pages to add to Favorites. Posts from these accounts will appear higher in the feed. To access Favorites, click your profile picture, then click Settings & privacy, then Feed Preferences, then Favorites. You can use the other options in this section to snooze, unfollow, or reconnect with other Facebook users. You can also choose to view just content from your Favorites.
• In-feed options: Click on any post and you’ll see a set of options including hiding the post, snoozing the user, or adding or removing the user from favorites. All of this provides information to the algorithm about what kind of content you want to see more (or less) of. On ads, the equivalent option is Hide ad. Facebook will then give you a set of options to indicate why you want to hide the ad. This will help Facebook understand what kind of advertisers you want to hear from, and which you’d rather avoid.

Facebook will remove content that goes against its Community Standards. They also reduce the distribution of “content that people find objectionable,” like “misinformation, a sensationalized health claim, or clickbait.”

Finally, there are some specific words to avoid when working with the Facebook algorithms:

• Threatening or violent language
• Harassing language, especially those that are sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist, and so on
• Words related to harmful stereotypes
• Slurs
• Any other language that violates the Community Standards

2023 Facebook feed algorithm

Facebook’s news feed algorithm feed mainly (but not exclusively) features relevant content from people, brands, and Groups you’re already connected to. Facebook explains that this algorithm uses four steps to determine the order of the content you see in your feed:

1. Inventory: All the content available from the people, pages, and groups you’re connected with, plus relevant ads and recommended content based on your Facebook activity.

2. Signals: These are the ranking signals discussed above.

3. Predictions: The algorithm crunches the data from the ranking factors to make custom predictions about which content you’ll value most.

4. Relevance: Each piece of content gets a relevance score, with the highest scoring posts closer to the top of your feed.

2023 Facebook Reels algorithm

Since Facebook Reels are a relatively new format compared to the feed, less information is available on the Facebook Reels algorithm. However, we do know some important best practices to help make your Reels more discoverable (a.k.a. ranked higher by the algorithm).

The overarching principle is to make high quality content. What exactly does that mean? Here are the specific recommendations straight from the source:

• Be entertaining and engaging
• Start a trend
• Use built-in tools like text, filters, or other effects
• Stick to vertical video
• Add music
• Experiment with different approaches
• Use good lighting and camerawork to create video that’s visually pleasing

And here’s what to avoid:

• Blurry or low-resolution video
• Videos with watermarks from other apps (i.e., TikTok)
• Video with a border around it
• Horizontal video

8 tips for working with the Facebook algorithm

1. Understand what your audience wants to see: Facebook indicates it prioritizes content that is “meaningful and informative.” So what does that mean, exactly?

• Meaningful: Stories the user will want to talk to friends and family about or spend time reading (based on past behavior), and videos they want to watch. Overall engagement also factors in here.
• Informative: Content someone will find “new, interesting, and informative,” which will vary by user.

Understanding what will be meaningful and informative to your specific audience means you need to understand their unique interests and behaviors. That means you need to do some audience research.

2. Create accurate and authentic content: Facebook says, “people on Facebook value accurate, authentic content.” They also specify that the types of posts people “consider genuine” will rank higher in the algorithm. Meanwhile, they work to reduce the ranking for posts people find “misleading, sensational, and spammy.”

A couple of tips for signaling the algorithm that your content is accurate and authentic:

• Write clear headlines: Make sure your headline clearly describes what users will find in your post. You can certainly get creative, but don’t use clickbait or misleading titles.
• Be truthful: Put simply, tell the truth. Don’t sensationalize, exaggerate, or outright lie.

On the flip side, here are some things to avoid:

• Content that impedes community safety, like violence, self-harm, or use of regulated products.
• Content with low-quality health or financial claims, like miracle cures or get-rich-quick schemes.
• Unoriginal content or unattributed news content
• False claims and misinformation

3. Don’t try to manipulate the algorithm: Trying to manipulate the algorithm to get more distribution than your content merits based on those ranking signals is a big no-no. This might include, for instance, paying for engagement or comments or engaging in other black-hat strategies (or “inauthentic sharing”) to manipulate reach.

The simple message here: Work with the algorithm, not against it.

4. Engage with your audience: The algorithm prioritizes posts from Pages that a user has had meaningful interactions with in the past. This means that bumping up your reply game is key.

If a person takes the time to comment on your post, don’t waste the opportunity. Making them feel heard with a reply makes it more likely they will continue to comment on your posts in the future. This, of course, sends more of those juicy engagement signals to the algorithm. Ignore them and they’ll likely go silent in return.

5. Get your audience to engage with each other: To get your audience sharing and discussing, check out our tips for boosting Facebook engagement.

6. Post at the right time: This is such an important topic that we’ve got a whole post dedicated to understanding the best time to post on Facebook.

7. Don’t forget the basic status post: latest research shows that status posts on average get among the highest engagement rates: 0.11%. Photo posts come in only marginally higher at 0.12%. Videos and link posts come in significantly lower at 0.08% and 0.04%, respectively.

8. Expand your reach via your best advocates: Your employees may have more credibility and authority with the Facebook algorithm than your brand page does. This is because they have more credibility and authority with their own followers and friends.

Your employees can exponentially expand your potential reach when they’re empowered to share your brand’s content to their own circles.

Conclusion:

The Facebook algorithm is a powerful tool that plays a crucial role in determining the content that appears to users. Understanding how this algorithm works and how it interacts with content can help individuals and businesses build effective strategies to reach their target audience on Facebook. By using the tips mentioned above, you can enhance the chances of your content's success and increase audience engagement.