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Have you ever wondered why some people’s posts get more interaction than others?
Why you seem to see more of certain people in your news feed and less of others?
You are not alone.
I was recently asked this question:
I think that I’ve just seen a very clear example of how Facebook ranks and promotes certain people’s post over others.
A colleague doing a Free promotion of his Kindle Ebook for home buyers and he posted about it on his personal feed, just like I did for my ebook. I got 20+ share, lots of comments, and likes. He got 8 likes, 1 comment and 0 shares.
The only difference that I can see is that he rarely posts status updates and I post pretty frequently and often get good conversations going in the comments.
Christina, is that what you would expect based on what you’ve read?
In a nutshell, yes.
Here’s the long answer:
how much engagement you have with your “friends” on your posts
how much engagement you have with your “friends” on their posts
the privacy settings of your post (public, friends of friends, friends only, etc)
and
how well your post is targeted to your likes/friends (similar interests)
how captivating and interesting your post is (good headline, good call to action, that kind of thing)
Now, several of these fall under two “official” titles:
Story Bump and Last Actor
Story Bump is dependent upon engagement and, it is based on an individual post.
The more engagement a post has, the more likely your post will be “bumped”.
For example: your post may go across a friend or fan’s news feed and initially, a lot of people interact. They share it, they comment on it, they like it, they click it.
The more activity you get, the more likely Facebook will decide to send that same post across news feeds again, regardless of it’s “recency”. Facebook will send that post across feeds of those who haven’t yet interacted with it, thereby creating even more engagement, thereby making it more popular, thereby sending it across more news feeds.
See the hamster wheel here?
Have you ever seen a post come across your news feed twice? At least you are pretty certain you’ve seen it before? That’s Story Bump in action.
Last Actor is about the people and pages you’ve recently interacted with.
The most recent, top fifty, to be exact.
Your personal news feed will show the posts and updates of the last fifty people and pages you’ve had some sort of interaction with. By interactions, I mean anything along the lines of liking a post, commenting on a post, sharing a post, clicking on a link in a post, visiting a profile or a page, friending a profile or liking a page, etc.
Have you ever wondered why you are no longer seeing posts from some people and you are seeing a ton of posts from other people? Last Actor is why.
Facebook, in all their infinite wisdom, thinks that you are more interested in seeing activity from those top fifty interactions than other interactions (which is why it’s imperative that you have a planned Social Media interaction strategy).
How do you get around this?
You can manipulate both, to a certain extent. You can share your own posts, like your own posts, comment on your own posts. These things help a fraction. It’s small, but it can be important.
You can get your “tribe” to help you as well. Enlist the help of 3-4 friends or fans who want to be a part of your success. Ask them to help share your posts, engage on your posts, etc.
Get good at copy writing. Get good at layout (not writing in one massive paragraph). Get good at knowing what your friends and fans like to see and interact with.
When your friends and fans like what you have to say, they will naturally interact with you.
Getting good at figuring out what to share, how to share it, and when to share it are imperative. Becoming an expert is even better.
Get your Facebook Page Setup the RIGHT way.
Click here to download my Facebook Page Setup Checklist for Real Estate Agents. It’s FREE!
Mary says
What I love about this, is that so many of these things just take a little bit of thought. I don’t post about my business very much on my personal feed, but I do make an attempt to post frequently, to post things that I think will be interesting to my friends. I want to make their day more interesting when they read my status updates.
And just that switch in perspective – of serving others, rather than focusing myself – meant that when I did need my friends help for my book promotion, Facebook showed that post to lots of people right from the start and those people all wanted to help.
Christina Ethridge says
Yes! My goal is always to entertain, inspire, encourage (and once in a while, a mildly rant, with the intention of letting people know others agree with them). If I get a chuckle out of something, I know someone else will to.