EdgeRank, the algorithm that determines what Facebook posts are shown to whom and for how long, was implemented late last year and immediately affected the profiles of everyone on Facebook, but had the most severe effects on business pages. Companies using Facebook to expand the visibility of their dealership have been impacted by recent changes to the algorithm. Some business pages lost as much as 40% of their reach, which is basically proportionate to a national company losing all marketing west of the Rockies.

These changes demand a shift in social media marketing strategy, and as many businesses begin to adapt, some are succeeding, while others are failing or just treading water. By looking at the underlying function of Edgerank, we have found strategies that can help you not just successfully adapt, but continue to have a flourishing social media marketing campaign.

Social media marketing is important, because even as platforms like Facebook become more difficult to use, more users are logging on and sharing more and new aspects of their lives on their profiles. As people are committing more time and energy to the online social experience, there is more customer focus that could potentially be captured by your business, and more customers who could be walking through your doors.

While drawing customers through Facebook is the goal, the recent changes to the Edgerank algorithm can stand in the way of getting your message to your customers. We can explore how Edgerank assigns value to content, and make sure that our own posts are viewed because they are engaging, because they draw in your visitors and ask them to interact and share their viewpoints, experiences, and reactions. We can help you to find the right kinds of content, adjust them to your audience, and earn their attention and interaction.

The adjustments made to Edgerank in September 2012 meant a 30-40% drop in your reach overnight. It seems that Facebook is trying to make business profiles lose visibility so that businesses will be forced to rely more on promoted posts to expand their reach. Promoted posts, however, will really just get the visibility of a business profile back to the level it was at before the Edgerank algorithm was changed… Putting more money into a promoted post simply means expanding the reach of a post, boosting your content within your network, but not taking it far beyond it.

So, a good strategy in the face of Edgerank cannot just focus on exchanging one technique for another, but should consider a new strategy with engaging content as the core component. Beyond this, there are other questions to answer. How do you want to expand your audience? Will you create the kind of shareable content that will naturally get distributed to friends of your customers, or do you have to develop another strategy? Are there options other than just straight advertising to accomplish this?

Until we answer these questions, be sure to check out some other source material, so that you can familiarize yourself with the subject, and we can help you go further in the face of Edgerank:

http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2012/10/facebook-decreases-pages-reach/

http://www.briansolis.com/2013/01/what-your-business-needs-to-know-about-facebooks-edgerank/

http://www.copperfoxmarketing.com/facebook-edgerank-changes/