On a monthly basis, Facebook commands a crazy 1.65 billion monthly users. Since its conception, it’s quickly soared in popularity and now holds first place as the most popular social media site, accounting for 1 in every 6 minutes spent online.
Put simply – Facebook is huge and everybody uses it a lot. That likely means that your potential customers, both buyers and sellers, are spending time there. So, your real estate agency should be investing time in getting your message in front of them.
Whether your content actually reaches their news feeds, however, is down to the Facebook algorithm. This intelligent code determines what people see, how many people see it and where it appears on their news feeds. To say it impacts your business potential is a huge understatement.
In this article, we’ll take you through what we know about the algorithm and how you can improve your content to make the most of your social media presence.
What exactly is the Facebook algorithm?
Facebook has released information that the average user can see roughly 1,500 posts each day, but usually only looks at 300. Their algorithm is the culmination of factors with which Facebook cherry-picks those select 300 posts.
Until 2011, this algorithm was known as EdgeRank and took into account three main factors:
- Affinity – how close are the user and the person that posted the content?
- Weight – what action did the content take?
- Time decay – when was the post originally made?
These three still make up part of the algorithm, but experts believe that Facebook now uses up to 10,000 others. That’s an impossible amount of factors to consider when you’re trying to climb your posts to the top.
The majority of these factors are based on the behaviour of Facebook users and how they engage with different types of content. Facebook’s VP of product management for News Feed, Adam Mosseri, explained their need for the algorithm:
“When we launched News Feed in 2006, it was hard to imagine the challenge we now face – far too much information for any one person to consume. In the decade since, more than a billion people have joined Facebook, and today they share a flood of stories every day. That’s why stories in News Feed are ranked – so that people can see what they care about first and don’t miss important stuff from their friends. If the ranking is off, people don’t engage, and leave dissatisfied. So one of our most important jobs is getting this ranking right.”
What factors do Facebook take into account?
There are a couple of more simple factors that News Feed takes into account when ranking posts. When deciding whether or not to display your real estate agency’s post to someone, the algorithm considers:
- Who posted it
- What the content type is
- When it was first posted
- Its interactions
As we’ve mentioned, however, there are a whole lot more factors that get taken into account, with changes being made to them several times a week. Between Autumn 2015 and August 2016, Facebook had already posted 8 major updates.
How can you get your content in the News Feed?
Since everyone uses Facebook differently, all News Feeds are unique. The best bet that you have as a business on Facebook isn’t going to be focusing on optimizing your posts for the algorithm, because it’s an endless task. You’ll likely end up chasing your tale and not reaping many results from it.
Instead, you should be focusing on providing your audience with content that they deem as valuable. Offer them something that they find useful and they’ll be more likely to engage with your brand. They’ll also likely be happy to offer you their information, such as an email address, in exchange for that content.
As engagement grows, so will your organic reach. The more people you reach, the more leads you’ll bring in.