How to quickly restore Facebook comments to your WordPress website after migration to SSL

Hello friends,

In today’s post I will share with you one quick and easy to apply fix for your “lost” Facebook comments after you’ve managed to move your website to SSL.

Before we begin – let’s define when this tutorial will be useful for you.

First of all you have to be using Facebook comments for your WordPress website. As you know from our previous posts on the topic, this is a great way to allow more people to get involved with your content without the need of additional registrations. Also each Facebook comment increases the popularity of your website within the social media.

For the purpose of this tutorial you may need to use the plugin “Facebook Comments”. Read more about it here: Facebook Comments for WordPress.

Second – this tutorial will be useful if you have just migrated from non-SSL to a SSL version of your WordPress website by using the “Really Simple SSL” plugin. Read how to achieve this from our post: Really Simple SSL – the proper way to secure WordPress.

Now let’s assume that you have been using Facebook Comments for a while before the migration to SSL. You have set up the plugin correctly and your visitors have commented on your website at least once and you are sure that the comments have been displayed correctly. Then you have decided to migrate to SSL and the comments are gone.

This is where our tutorial begins. Prepare to learn how to quickly restore Facebook comments to your WordPress website after migration to SSL!

Your Facebook comments are not lost! You can check them out in your moderation tool. They may have been disabled or hidden, but they are still there. Re-enable them if needed and then return to your WordPress website.

Create a child theme if you haven’t done this already. This will ensure that your Facebook comments won’t get lost again during your theme’s update. If you have set up your child theme successfully simply create a new functions.php file for it. This can be a blank file (i.e. without any content in it). Save it and then edit it.

Add the following code:

function rsssl_exclude_http_url($html) { 
//replace the https url back to http 
$html = str_replace('data-href="https://www.domain.com', 'data-href="http://www.domain.com', $html); 
return $html; 
} 
add_filter("rsssl_fixer_output","rsssl_exclude_http_url");

Change domain.com to your website’s domain name (with or without www). Do this for both entries (http and https) in the code above. Save the file and clear your cache.

Reload the post or page where you were certain that you had Facebook comments before the migration to SSL. They should be back once again.

In case you are not using a child theme you can add this code to your main functions.php file and save it. However when your theme gets updated this code will be lost and you will need to re-enter it once again.

That’s all friends! For more information and other solutions for the “lost” Facebook comments after migrating to SSL for your WordPress website, please read this post: How to recover Facebook likes after moving to https/ssl.

If you have any questions or other feedback, please share them in the comment section below. See you soon, friends!

Facebook Save Button for WordPress – how-to

Hello friends,

Are you familiar with the functionality of Facebook that allows you to save your favourite content for later reading? This is already integrated not only in the desktop version of the social network but also in its mobile applications for different devices.

In this post I will show you how you can add the famous “Save to Facebook” button to your WordPress website so that you can gain all the benefits of having it.

But before we begin, let’s explain why the content saving functionality is useful and what alternatives do you have.

There are different ways to store any link that you find interesting so that you can access it later. You may want to do this if you don’t have the time to read it now or you want to re-read it again. In the past the most popular solution was the bookmarking functionality of any web browser. At one point this was great but it was only suitable for one browser and one device. This meant that if you wanted to go to another PC or mobile phone you had to search for the content once again in order to access it.

Nowadays almost any modern browser allows you to sync your data including bookmarks to any device if you have a profile and you are logged in. Also there are awesome solutions like Pocket that will allow you to store your favourite content so that you can access it once again at a later point.

But all of this needs another account and another login and so on and so on. This may frustrate some users. That is why storing your content in Facebook is not only easier but also useful. First of all you can save any content right from your feed – no need of an additional software or logins. Second you can access it anywhere. Third – you get reminded about your saved and unread content on a regular basis.

OK, I understand the usefulness of the saving functionality. Why would I integrate an additional button on my website when any user can save my content from the Facebook feed almost instantly?

This is a great question! Many website owners and admins may consider any additional code a burden that may slow down the entire project. I must agree that there is some truth to these concerns. Also each Facebook user can indeed save your content almost instantly when they see it in their respective news feed.

The tricky part is “when they see it”. As you know Facebook only shows your posts on a limited amount of your audience if you are not paying for ads. So some of them surely won’t be able to see your content unless they visit your Facebook page. And this happens quite rarely, especially on a social media like Facebook where each user is basically “drowned” in the ocean of information in their news feed.

So one way to ensure that your great content will be saved on Facebook is to have the “Save to Facebook” button on your WordPress website so that any organic visitor may use it. Also this means that you will be getting additional traffic from Facebook later when the user re-visits your website from the saved content. And this will happen as Facebook will remind the user about it eventually.

Also this is another great way to popularize your brand on Facebook and respectively your Facebook page.

OK, I am convinced that I need to integrate the Facebook Save Button on my WordPress website. How can I do this?

First of all you have to choose the plugin solution or the non-plugin one. In case of the latter you need to have some advanced WordPress skills and you also need to visit this page and get familiar with the setup process. After you are done your button will be available on your website on the areas where you decided to place it.

The plugin way is much more easier and it is suitable for beginners. That is why I am going to focus on it.

Begin by installing and activating the “FB Save Button For WP” plugin. You may download it from WordPress.org or use the plugin installer on your website to get it running.

Once you are done, please head to your WordPress dashboard and go to “Settings -> FB Save Button”. There you need to adjust a few settings:

Once you are done you have to save all changes and then you can start using your Facebook Save Button. You may like to test it so that you are sure that it works as intended. Any saved content should be marked as such.

So all you have to do now is to tell your audience of the new functionality and invite them to start using it.

That’s it friends! If you have any questions, please use the comment form below. Share this post in social media as well so that it can help other users like you.

See you soon!

Social Login for WordPress

Hello friends,

In this post I will present to you one of the most popular solutions for WordPress login. It utilizes social media and allows your users to log in to your website with just a single click on a button.

This plugin is called Social Login.

Why would I want to add a plugin like Social Login to my WordPress website?

Because this is one of the most sure ways to keep your visitors returning to it on a regular basis. Let’s assume that you want to create a website that provides a user profile for each visitor. This profile is needed to interact with the website’s content in some ways – commenting, uploading files, sharing data, creating content, etc.

The classic way to do this is to allow each visitor to create a profile by adding username, email and password. Then each time this new user wants to log in to your website they have to enter these details over and over again. Now imagine that they forget them. The most common situation is to keep trying to log in with different combinations until they give up or your WordPress has a protection that blocks them from further attempts. Then the users that will truly want to log in will have to reset their password by entering a valid email then add new password and so on.

Most of the users will not do this as it is time-consuming. This means that your website has to be extremely valuable for your users in order to make them try to log in in case of a forgotten password. In most cases they will just skip this step and leave.

But even if they do not forget the password/user name they have to re-enter it every time the cookie expires or they are using a different browser. This is also burdening and most users will not be happy.

The social login functionality skips all of these steps and allows the instant creation of new profiles and logins with just a click of a button that represents the social media profile of the user. This will urge the visitors to create profiles and interact with your content and also it will make them coming back regularly.

OK. What social media networks are supported in Social Login?

More than 30! Here is a list of some of them:

As you can see the list is quite good. Having so many options is ideal if you are intending to target audiences from different parts of the world.

How to use Social Login?

Install the plugin and activate it. Then visit Settings -> Social Login to configure it. From there you can choose which social networks you want to be available on your website for login purposes. Doing this is extremely easy as you have to click on the checkbox to select or remove each of them.

There are some other settings that you need to configure and you are basically done. Now each time you visit the WordPress login form it may look like this:

Or you may prefer larger buttons like these:

Additionally you may choose to place the social login options to your comment form for commenting purposes. You can also add a widget in your widget areas in order to allow the visitors to login or create profiles while they are browsing.

This is it friends! Now you know how to increase engagement to your WordPress website by allowing extremely easy registrations and logins using different social media.

If you like this plugin, please give it a try and don’t forget to share your experience with the rest of TheCMSPlace’s community. You can use the comment form below for this purpose and we will be happy to hear from you. Also you can share any other thoughts and questions that you might have regarding the Social Login plugin.

Don’t forget to share this post on social media as well. Be social!

See you soon friends!

Facebook instant articles for WordPress

Hello friends,

Nowadays everything is about speed! Not only in terms of SEO but mainly in terms of usability. The search engines are strict about these requirements and monitor each website so that only the optimized ones will be on top.

But this is no longer a specific task reserved only for the crawling bots. The other major traffic source (social media) has joined the party with similar requirements. And in this post I will present to you some solutions for optimizing your WordPress website for the instant articles of the biggest player so far – Facebook.

What are instant articles?

This is a website content that is shared on Facebook as you would do normally. However when clicking on it the user will still remain in Facebook and load it instantly leveraging the same technology that is used to display photos and videos in the Facebook mobile app itself. According to Facebook the loading times are 10 times better compared to the standard mobile web.

So the instant articles can be considered an optimized website content that is instantly available for the Facebook mobile app users. They are interactive and immersive. With this technology each publisher can improve the user experience by bringing a new life to their content. In order to find out more about this program you should visit the official website instantarticles.fb.com

Also you can see how they work from this video:

https://youtu.be/HVEksGDABko

How is WordPress involved in all of this?

You need to optimize your content for the instant article program so that you can leverage its powerful features and provide your Facebook followers with great mobile content that is loading instantly on their mobile devices using the mobile app.

How to optimize WordPress for Facebook’s instant articles?

There is an official way to do it and some unofficial (yet effective) solutions all in the forms of plugins, of course.

The official plugin is created by Facebook and Automattic (the company that is behind WordPress.com). You can get it from GitHub by clicking here.

What it does? It interacts with your content so that you can get your text and multimedia loaded instantly and properly displayed in the Facebook mobile app. For example your images will be available for full screen viewing after a simple click on them. See the example below:
 wp-foreign-policy1

This plugin also adapts the video player so that they can fit beautifully and instantly in the instant articles.

And basically this is all regarding the official solution. You can read more about it here: Introducing a WordPress Plugin for Instant Articles. Bear in mind that this plugin is still in BETA phase.

What other options do I have?

Since the instant articles program is yet to fully arive on the scene you should be aware that all of the solutions are still having some potential problems. However some of them are quite fit for the task at hand and I will present them to you.

The first one is PageFrog. You can get it from WordPress.org and install it. It will optimize your website not only for Facebook’s instant articles but also for Google’s accelerated mobile pages (don’t miss to check the article on the topic for AMP).

PageFrog

After you activate the plugin you should go to “Mobile Formats -> Setup” and then follow the instructions on the screen in order to optimize your WordPress content for the specific mobile pages (instant articles in our current case).

After this you will receive a live preview while editing your content so that you can be fully aware how it will end up looking when loaded on the users’ mobile devices.

screenshot-2

If you are happy with PageFrog’s presentantion and functionality (see the reviews for the plugin) then I suggest that you read this great guide on how to set it up correctly. It is created by socialmediaexaminer.com and it will also present to you what is needed to start on the instant articles program.

There are also other solutions but currently they are not rated quite high and this means that you might have some potential problems with them. Of course you should keep an eye on their development as they might turn to be the most suitable options for your WordPress website in the near future.

Here is a list of the WordPress plugins for Facebook Instant Articles that you might also consider:

What is next?

Patience and optimization! The instant article program is a great thing and each publisher should be utilizing its powerful features. This will improve traffic and conversions as well as overall user experience and brand awareness. This will also gain you more Facebook followers, comments and likes (and other emotions/reactions as well).

Currently my personal choice is to wait a little bit longer before I activate instant articles on my websites. However waiting does not mean doing nothing. I am preparing by selecting content that is to be provided initially to the program. But if you consider yourselves ready then you can go ahead and try some of the solutions mentioned above.

Please don’t forget to share your experience with them in the comments below. This will be extremely useful for our community here at TheCMSPlace.

See you soon friends!

Why you should use Jetpack for WordPress

Hello friends,

In this post I will present to you one extremely popular solution for WordPress. It is called Jetpack and here you will find out several reasons why you should give it a try for your website.

What is Jetpack?

The short answer is a WordPress plugin. However it is not just any regular plugin – it is a complete booster for any self-hosted website (downloaded from WordPress.org).

It provides you with many modules that are absolutely free for use. You can activate all of them or just choose the ones that you really need. And there are some of them that are absolutely necessary for any WordPress website.

Jetpack is 100% free and all you have to do is just download it, install it, activate it and login with your WordPress.com account. And if the modules and their functionalities are not enough for you, you can always consider a premium upgrade that will provide you with even more power.

That’s great, but what is this WordPress.com account for Jetpack? I thought that it was a solution for the WordPress.org websites?

And that is correct! It is a solution for the self-hosted variant of our beloved WordPress, however it provides it with all the great features from the WordPress.com solution for free. That’s why you need an account for it. You can create one for free. It is not needed to create a blog there – just an account. Then after you have installed Jetpack you will be able to connect your website with that account and start using the powerful features of the plugin.

OK – which Jetpack modules do I really need?

I will answer this question with a question – How much power do you want for your website? If the answer is “as more as possible” then you should activate as much modules as possible.

However having too much power isn’t always the optimal solution. So my advice is to check out all modules and then select the ones that will provide you with the features that your website is lacking.

While you are considering what to choose, I will help you with a hint – there are 7 modules that are very needed so you might want to start with them.

Module 1 – WordPress Stats

This an absolute must-have. This is an analytics solution that will provide you with information on the activity of all non-logged-in users. All you have to do is to be logged in your administrator account and then view your stats. This solution will provide additional information so it is absolutely OK to have it running alongside with your Google Analytics account. The more data you have – the better.

Module 2 – Publicize

This module will automatically ping your social services (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and will post the new content on your behalf.

Module 3 – Sharing

This is an absolute must-have for your WordPress website. I have already reviewed it in details in this post, so go ahead and find out why you need it.

Module 4 – Contact forms

Every modern website needs contact forms. And here you have a complete functionality absolutely for free. So why don’t you give it a try?

Module 5 – Jetpack comments

This is another must-have. It improves the default WordPress comment system and allows your visitors to either comment with their accounts on your website, or to log in using social media and then comment. Of course you can allow them to write their e-mail and name and comment without registration or a social media profile as well.

In my opinion this module also helps reduce spam comments. However if you want even better protection the premium upgrades of Jetpack are there for you.

Module 6 – The Jetpack mobile theme

I used to love one non-responsive theme. It looks great, however Google did not liked it while it was not mobile-friendly. So I had to change it. But while struggling to choose a new theme and decide on its design I had to stay with the old non-responsive one. And what saved my ranks and provided my visitors with mobile visits was the Jetpack’s mobile theme. It is absolutely simple to activate and use. And if you like keeping things simple you may find the combination of any non-responsive theme and Jetpack’s module to be absolutely great and efficient. It basically transfers any mobile-unfriendly website to a mobile-friendly one.

Module 7 – Photon

Speed is another very important SEO factor. And to improve it you have to start by optimizing your images. Now, you will find some articles here that I have written about image optimization. But no matter what you do, you will find out that having a CDN is probably the most favorable solution. And Jetpack provides you with such option in the form of its free Photon module. It will make your website faster, so you can consider giving it a try.

And these are the 7 modules that you should start with. You may also consider the following ones as well:

So, dear friends, that is why you should use Jetpack for WordPress. What do you think? Please share any questions or feedback in the comments below.

See you soon!

Facebook Comments for WordPress

Having a fully functional commenting system for your WordPress site is imperative!

There are many reasons why this is a must but for now let’s focus mainly on building relationships with your audience by speaking to them via the comments. This will definitely help your reputation and will lead to more traffic and followers. Knowing how to handle positive and negative comments and how to respond to each of them is vital but this is a topic that will be discussed later on.

Let’s get back on the need for a fully functional commenting system.

WordPress has one which could be useful by tweaking it a little bit. But this solution could be complex and if you want your visitors to be able to share their opinion on your content as fast and as easy as possible then you will need another option. Starting from this post I will present to you several ways of integrating different comment solutions for WordPress as well as improving the default commenting system.

In this article I am going to explain to you how you can integrate Facebook comments for your WordPress website and why you would want to do this in the first place.

Actually let’s start with the latter. The main reason why you will want this is because you want your visitors to feel great when they are browsing your website. This means that if they want to comment something they should be able to do this instantly without any additional actions. And while most of them are logged in Facebook as they are searching for useful information on the web they will benefit of having the ability to comment directly using their own personal profile. Also the Comment box is similar in terms of design and functionality to the Facebook comments on the social media itself. Thus the visitors will be familiar with the functionality of the commenting system on your WordPress website and will feel comfortable using it. And what is more important – no additional registrations, no extra passwords to remember, no extra personal data to be submitted, etc. But wait there’s more – they will be notified of new comments in Facebook and they will be able to return to your website to re-join the conversation which will result in extra traffic for your website.

The next reason why you would integrate Facebook Comments in WordPress is because this commenting system will lead to virality for your content. Each visitor may choose to share their comment in Facebook as well and this will end up sharing your post/page as well.

We’re not done yet, friends! There’s more! Having Facebook Comments on WordPress will help your content also by increasing its credibility. Why? Because this reduces the fake comments to a minimum since most of the Facebook users will have their own profile picture and name set for their accounts and therefore everyone can see that the comment came from a real person.

OK, so currently we have the following reasons to choose Facebook Comments as a commenting system for WordPress: improved usability, extra social traffic, virality and credibility. What is missing? Ah, yes! SPAM! You don’t want spammy comments for your website, right? Then you have to take care of it somehow. The Facebook Comment system will do this for you since the administration of the social media is fighting with SPAM and fake accounts on a daily basis. So you will have one of the most SPAM-free commenting systems there is.

So with this I am more than sure that you are wondering how to integrate Facebook Comments in WordPress. So let’s focus on this.

There are many plugins that will do the trick for the task at hand. The problem is that many of them are not working correctly or might not fit into your theme design. Either way this is something that is not desired so I am not going to lie to you that the best way to integrate Facebook comments is by visiting the Facebook Developers page and generate the code for the social plugin by yourself. Then place this comment in the respective theme file so that i will show exactly where you want this to happen and voila – you are done!

However this may be hard for beginners that is why I am going to present a solution that I have tested on some of my websites and I know that it functions correctly. It is called Facebook Comments and it is a simple to use plugin. All you need is a Facebook app ID that you can easily create on the Facebook Apps page. Actually you will need this for all the solutions regarding Facebook comments that is why it is important. Now go through the app creation process fill in the necessary details and link the app to your website by choosing Website as the desired platform for the app and finally you will be presented with your app ID which you have to paste in the Facebook Comment plugin settings. Then choose the moderators for your comments. You may assign some of your friends as well.

The settings menu of the Facebook Comments WordPress plugin

Each comment on your WordPress website will result in a Facebook notification and this will allow you to easily moderate the comments. You may allow them as public, delete or hide them with ease. In the plugin’s setting you will find a link to the Facebook moderation tool for your app. Also this plugin provides a great set of options so that you can end up having a perfectly fit and functioning Facebook Commenting system for your website.

The Facebook Comments WordPress Plugin in action on a WordPress Post

Finally I’d like to inform you that if you have entered your app ID in any other plugins and it is present in the Open Graph Protocol code you should not enter it once again for this plugin as it will lead to duplicate lines. So ignore the plugin’s error messages that you have not entered your app ID and proceed using it. It will work.

If you have any questions – feel free to ask in the comments below. Which is your favorite commenting system for WordPress?

See you again friends!

Facebook for business explained

Facebook is a great way to promote your content but you have to know how to do it the right way.

The first major thing you have to consider is that Facebook is constantly changing. What works for you this month can prove useless the next one. You have to learn to adapt and know this –Facebook are playing the game for the money. When you create a Facebook page you don’t have direct access to the people who liked your page. Facebook is just renting them to you. This means you can be kicked out any time without any warning and you can’t do anything about it.

How Facebook ticks?

Every time when you write with one of your friends, Facebook counts this as an interaction called edge.

The more you interact with your friends– send messages to them, like or comment their posts  – the bigger your edge rank with them gets. Basically it means that if Friend A with whom you interact frequently and Friend B with whom you interact rarely post a picture in the same time, you are going to see first the picture of Friend A. Because you interact more with Friend A, Facebook considers him more important to you. So we can say that this is some kind of a competition.

Most of the people using Facebook constantly like pages, photos, statuses and etc.  This means that the competition for their Facebook feed is greater.

Facebook gives priority to your friends. Very little of the Facebook pages that the users had liked are showing in their feed. We have to consider as well that the edge rank decays over time. So you can’t rely on old and frequently circulated content.

The same rules as the ones mentioned above are applicable for Facebook pages with one tiny annoying exception- you are actually outgunned in this game. Your Facebook page posts are not equal to the posts from the Facebook users. This means that if displayed at all your content will be displayed in the end of the feed of the people who liked your page.

So if you want your content to be seen by users who have liked your page you have two choices: providing good quality content and Facebook advertising.

Does high quality content matter?

There is one really annoying advice that you have been constantly given. Post original and high quality content. With great regret I have to agree with that one. If you want people to like your content and to interact with it by giving likes, writing comments and etc., it has to be very good. This way you can achieve an organic engagement. And more importantly you can form a group of passionate followers.

Sadly, in most cases great content is not the only precondition for success. In most cases you have to combine good quality content content with Facebook advertisement.

Facebook’s advertisement and promotion options

Facebook advertising is the way of Facebook saying “we own these people and you have to pay in order to have access to them”. So yes, in a way Facebook own us. Maybe someday they will become too greedy for their own good but we will see what the future holds. Although you have to pay for it, Facebook advertising is relatively cheap and offers great ways for targeting. After all, Facebook knows your interests just like Google stores every search query you make. This way you can target your audience more precisely according to their interests and hobbies.

Paying for Facebook likes?

Let’s say you write a blog or you own an E-commerce website. You can target users interested in the things you offer. My advice to you is: choose your audience carefully and don’t ever buy Facebook likes. Facebook has an inbuilt option for promoting your website. With great regret I have to inform you that it’s a waste of money. – Why? Because there are thousands of people from some Third World countries receiving payment for simply hitting the like button. As a consequence you get people who don’t care for your content and they are lowering your engagement and reach. Facebook considers these metrics when you post something on your page. The lower they scores the fewer people your content is being shown to.

There are websites offering real likes but you have to consider that they are affected by the same “fake like plague”. The results are the same and even worse as if you were using Facebook’s promoting option. You are paying more for something you can do yourself.

In summary, we need high quality content for great engagement, as well as determination and a budget for Facebook advertisement.

A piece of advice: Facebook is a great tool for advertisement but you need to develop all your marketing channels at the same time: Google, Google+, Twitter, Youtube etc. This way if you lose one of your networks you can still remain in the game – shaken but still alive.

 

Understanding Facebook and promoting your content on it

Understanding Facebook

As the world’s largest social media network, Facebook is being subject to a lot of competition. The news feed is limited and it isn’t possible to display every post from every page a user follows. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine what content to make visible in a user’s news feed. It’s a complicated process and not all of the elements that form the algorithm are being brought to public knowledge. The elements already known include the following:

·        The post type (text, photo, status, link, etc.)  the user finds the most interesting

·        How much engaging is the post to the audience

·        Posts being reported as spam or being hidden by the user

·        A user’s interaction with Facebook ads

·        The Internet speed and the device of the user

 

EdgeRank

EdgeRank, the original news feed ranking system, used by Facebook is still a part of the present news feed algorithm.

Every friend’s action on Facebook appears in the newsfeed. Facebook calls these actions Edges.

EdgeRank is the algorithm that ranks the Edges and displays the ones scoring well.

Why should I care?

Facebook ranks all stories according to their EdgeRank score. The stories with the highest score appear at the top of the user’s newsfeed. If according to the algorithm a status update is boring to a particular user, that status update will never be even shown to him.

How does EdgeRank work?

The EdgeRank is unique to each user. The algorithm was revealed at Facebook’s 2010 F8 conference. It consists of the following 3 elements:

1.     Affinity score

2.     Edge Weight

3.     Time Decay

Affinity Score

The Affinity Score calculates how connected a particular user is to the Edge( the action). It takes into account 3 things:

1)    The strength of the action

2)    How close is a particular user to the one who took the action

3)    How long ago did the action take place

Two users, interacting with each other on Facebook have different affinity scores relative to one another.

 

EdgeWeight

Each action has a different weight, reflecting the efforts required for the action. The actions include liking, clicking, commenting, sharing, tagging and friending. Apart from clicking, every action creates a potential story. The principle of the EdgeWeight is simple: the more interested in the content a user is, the more effort he or she puts into a specific action, connected to that content. That is why commenting is worth more than liking and liking is worth more than clicking and posting photos and videos, instead of links scores your story higher. Simply viewing a status update in your newsfeed does not include any form of interaction and does not count toward the affinity score.

New Facebook features usually have a higher EdgeWeight. The intent behind that is to promote the features to the users.

Time Decay

The time of the interaction is another key component of the algorithm. If a user interacts with someone a lot, but not so much lately, the influence of the user’s affinity score starts to decline. In short: the older the story gets, the more it loses points. Facebook measures this by multiplying each action by 1/x, where “x” is the amount of time since the action took place.

When a user logs into Facebook and visits his newsfeed, among the stories posted most recently, the ones with the highest score appear. So, a status update made by a user will show up on the newsfeed only if it has a higher score compared to other newsfeed stories that happened at the same moment.

How do I check my EdgeRank score?

Facebook keeps this algorithm a secret. Instead a user can measure the effects of EdgeRank by checking how many people he reached. Since the engagement impacts the EdgeRank, the user can also measure the engagement that he or she gets with the help of a Facebook analytics tool.

Since there is no such thing as general EdgeRank score, each user has a different affinity score with a page.

 

Facebook Changes

Last June Facebook announced they would be limiting organic news feed impressions for brands, so as to provide users with a “higher quality content” in the news feed. The social media believes that users don’t want to see this promotional content in the news feed. This applies to organic content only, not ads. Facebook defines any of the following as being promotional:

1.     Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app

2.     Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context

3.     Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

 

Manipulative practices such as like-bating (posts that ask fans to complete specific actions) and posting spam and frequently circulated content are subject to restrictions, as Facebook updated their news feed spam algorithm. Another tactic that Facebook banned in 2014 is the like-gating. Many pages like-gate their content by requiring users to like pages before they can gain access to special content.

How to promote my content

Many marketers rely on Facebook reach to measure whether their efforts are paying-off.  Reach is the number of  Facebook users who see a page’s published post – and it’s been steadily declining in 2014 due to Facebook algorithm changes. Business that are new to Facebook assume that the majority of fans see their posts and it comes as a shock when they realise that’s not the case.

Things you have to avoid:

Buying fans is not a good business tactic. First, they don’t add real value and second, a little or no engagement to a page with numerous fans is a signal to consumers that they are fake. The less of engagement also means that Facebook will be less likely to display your content by making it visible to/ for the real fans.

Things that will help you:

Facebook Insights

Using Facebook Insights can help you learn more about your audience. It’s a proprietary analytics platform with different data sets.  Facebook Insights consists of five metrics: Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People.

Likes show how many people have liked your page within a given time frame. It also provides information on the number of people who “unliked” your page, as well as on the proportion of paid versus organic likes.

Reach is indicative for the number of people who have seen your posts. It also displays metrics like comments, likes and shares, indicative for the engagement of the audience.

Visits gives you a breakdown of which pages (tabs) were visited (i.e. timeline, likes tab, custom tabs, etc.) and also which referring sites (external) brought people to your Facebook page.

Posts provides an analysis of your content by using indicators (metrics) such as post type, engagement of the audience, total reach and time of the day.

People gives information on the demographics of your audience according to their gender, spoken language or location. It also compares people reached versus people engaged.

Facebook Insights gives brands a complete picture on the performance of their page.

It is important for brands to create online communities and to connect with their target audience through social media. However Facebook does not foster free promotion regardless of the quality of the content or the level of engagement of the audience. Paid ads and sponsored posts are a good option for promoting your content. With Facebook advertisement you can target your ads specifically to the audience that is interested in your content and services.