Posts Tagged ‘Engagement’

Facebook’s EdgeRank Tool Decides Who Matters To You

EdgeRank is a tool that Facebook uses to decide who should see your status updates.  In recent months we have all wondered why some of our friends no longer show up in news feed or why people are not seeing us in their feeds.  The answer is EdgeRank. 

Social Media Examiner just posted an informative article that explains EdgeRank and gives some pointers on how to have better engagement on Facebook.  In a nutshell it’s all about quality engagement.  Check out the article called 6 Tips to Increase Your Facebook EdgeRank and Exposure.

Facebook sees everything that is published as an object.  Every object receives a rank.  The author of the article Jim Lodico explains how EdgeRank works:

An object’s EdgeRank is based on three factors:  affinity or the relationship between the creator and user, interaction with the object (likes, comments, etc.) and timeliness.  Add the three factors together using a formula that only Facebook truly knows and you’ve got an object’s EdgeRank.

So, you can see that it takes more than just posting your status to be seen on Facebook.  For friends who are truly close and comment to each other frequently, the EdgeRank is high enough for them to see each other in the news feed.  However, for business purposes getting seen will require the use of advertising as well as engaging content.

Has Facebook’s EdgeRank caused you to notice that a few of your friends are missing?  How will you go about getting to a level of engagement with your missing friends so that you can keep up with each other?  

On the business side, does anyone have any suggestions or experiences to share about using Facebook advertising?

Twitter Is The Social Media Platform Of Choice For Fortune Global 500 Companies

Burson-Marsteller recently released the results of a survey they conducted to determine where companies engage the most using social media tools.  The study indicates that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.

It’s interesting to find that companies are not just posting and tweeting randomly.   Real conversations are going on.  

For an evidence-based approach to social media, the reports suggest the following 9 tips:

1.  Monitor your own, and your competitors, social media presence.

2.  Get top management “buy-in”. 

3.  Develop a social media strategy.

4.  Define and publish a social media policy.

5.  Develop internal structure.

6.  Contribute to the community.

7.  Participate in good times and in bad.

8.  Be perpared to respond in real time.

9.  Beyond monitoring, measure the impact of social media engagement.

You don’t have to be a big company to harness the power of social media engagement.  The rules are the same for any size business.  In fact, social media has leveled the playing field in such a way that a small company or individual can have the same kind of reach as a bigger company by using social media tools.   But you do have to follow the rules.  If you are the top management then you must agree with yourself that you will be committed to using the social media tools you select.  Do publish your social media policy even if you are the only one who will see it at first.  This will give you a guide to help you remember what you said you would do.  Don’t think that just because your business is local that you don’t have competitors.  You do.  Social media tools provide a great way of finding out what they are doing.

So, what is your social media tool of choice?  How is your engagement through that channel improving your business outcomes?  Have you performed a social media checkup lately?