One of Facebook’s core value propositions is the ability for brands to easily share content and experiences with consumers who have opted in (Likes).

At a high level, the marketing formula is simple:

Step 1 – Like Acquisition: Use a combination of paid media and engagement tactics to drive likes.

Step 2 – Like Retention & Engagement: Utilize the wall and custom applications to share a mix of promotional, utility and brand content and/or experiences with your database.

What’s the Problemo ?

Answer: Top News Vs. Recent News.

Facebook categorizes status updates and wall posts into two categories: 1. Top News and 2. Recent News using a scoring system called Edgerank.

Facebook Recent News AKA The Deadzone

According to Datamotion and Buddymedia, Edgerank measures:

• How often does the receiver interact with the poster;
• How recently the receiver befriended the poster;
• How recently you interacted with the poster;
• The popularity of the content you are sharing

To determine a given post’s Edgerank score. If the score is low, the post ends up in the receiver’s recent posts. If the score is high, the post ends up in top news.

Based on low wall post recall scores in recent studies, once the ‘just liked your brand page’ honeymoon phase is over, many brand posts seem to be ending up in the same category as your long lost “friend” from high school who thinks you’re his BFF= recent news.

Conquering Edgerank:

While there is no magic formula , a mix of paid media and well crafted content strategy will definitely improve your fan-base ROI.

We recommend tactics such as:

1. Allocating paid media budget to target Facebook ads towards your existing fan-base.
   Sounds crazy right. It’s not. If you are running a major promotion, paid ads targeting your fan-base will guarantee that your message is reaching its intended audience
2. Benchmarking your Facebook content strategy with engagement KPIs ( likes, commments and other forms of interactions).
   This means allocating dollars to developing and aggregating compelling content experiences; in addition to monitoring performance.
3. Employing sharing tactics that have been shown to drive higher interaction rates.
   A strategic (read: on brand – not just for the sake of driving interaction) mix of trivia, questions and images with text-heavy posts tend to drive higher interaction rates. The obvious best practice of responding to fans when they post will also ramp up your score.
4. Know your Edgerank.
   One tool available is called Edgerank Checker. Some people debate its accuracy but as a standalone metric to measure improvement against over time; it may be very helpful.