Facebook Edgerank and what it means for your business

Clever Facebook, very clever indeed, I applaud your revenue driving efforts. Before I go into detail, let me explain in the most simplistic terms possible what Edgerank is.

If you do not take some sort of action from a page that you have “liked” they will stop showing up in your news feed. You see, people “like” practically everything these days and Facebook had to come up with a way to show in your news feed what you’re really, genuinely interested in. This also applies with people, every notice the same people or pages showing up in your news feed consistently? That is because you are looking at their pictures, leaving them comments, “liking” their updates and having some sort of consistent interaction with them.  We know your buddy Bob who you knew in the 11^th grade that now lives in Arizona who you haven’t talked to in 20 years is your Facebook friend but have you “really” reconnected with him or even care about what’s going on with his life? It’s always fun to connect with a really old friend to see what they have been up to but after the novelty of it fades you realize why you haven’t really kept in touch with them after all. However, you keep them as a friend on Facebook. Since you really have nothing in common with this person, you really don’t like or care for anything they have going on in their life they are least the important person to display in your newsfeed. Edgerank.

Why it’s a clever revenue boost for Facebook?

Often times fans are gamed into ‘liking” a page.  Remember that chance you had to win a $1,000 by liking that diaper company? Of course you liked the page, who wouldn’t want to win a cool G? Needless to say you didn’t win but your still a fan of that page. Problem is that after that contest was over the brand did very little to give you engaging useful content so you just ignored them and pretty soon it just went away. That is Facebook Edgerank.

Many brands have done a poor job at messaging their fans and getting them to engage. The consequence in providing poor content is that your messages are now bumped from your fans newsfeeds since you did nothing to encourage them to “like”, share or comment on. 

Now what do you do to get back those fans you have lost? Buy Facebook advertising to give those fans something to re-engage in.  

Is making a company have to buy advertising to get their fans re-engaged clever or just wrong?