Facebook is a powerful social network that is ideal for spreading your content to a large, active audience. The goal, as many of you know is to be seen on people’s News Feeds. If you are blindly sending out massive amounts of relevant content and no one sees it, then there isn’t much point. Luckily for brands Facebook has shared their algorithm, EdgeRank for ranking content on Facebook and filtering what appears in the news feed. The algorithm consists of three components:

1. Affinity – The number of times 2 people (or a person and a page) have interacted

2. Weight – The number of times users have interacted (commented, liked) with the content in question

3. Time Decay – The time since the content was posted. Note that Facebook moves and changes very quickly, and your news feed, for example, never has content more than 24 hours old.

Now that you have an understanding of how Facebook ranks and filters content, it is time to strategize ways to get your content seen on your fans Facebook newsfeeds!

Producing compelling content is the key is to increasing affinity and weight so that your content will be seen by a larger audience on Facebook. Unfortunately, creating compelling and original content is often one of the biggest challenges marketers are faced with. While most marketers generally acknowledge that content is crucial, many aren’t sure what kind of content their audience will respond to.

Today’s digital audience is not receptive to content that resembles “sales talk.” The main problem with the sales pitch method is that it leaves no room for customer interaction. If you take the more interactive route with marketing content and a less sales-like one, then it creates more engagement and dialogue between you and your audience. Sales talk is one of the many reasons brands may become “unfollowed” or “unliked” on Facebook. So instead, try using a promotion to engage your audience and get great user generated content! Let your audience help tell your brand story and you’ll be rewarded with increased engagement and more visibility.

Running a contest or sweepstakes ensures that you have timely and interesting content to share with your audience. An enticing prize or a fun promotion is likely to be shared by your audience, and the more people share your content, the higher your Edgerank. Getting people to engage with your promotion on Facebook will help your brand increase visibility because your brand will appear more frequently in the news feed of your audience and their friends. A contest that incorporates voting will have multiple opportunities for participation, making it much more likely for your promotion to spread to a larger, extended audience of entrants and voters. A promotion also gives you something to talk about regularly, helping you stay top of mind and at the top of the news feed.

So, there you have it! Utilizing promotions is a great way to not only keep your audience engaged and incentivized, but also to improve the Edgerank of your day-to-day communications with them!