3 Marketing Tips to Take Advantage of Facebook’s Algorithm

Yesterday I tried a little experiment. You see, I’m a big fan of Facebook’s relatively new Trending Topics feature. I look at the trending topics feed regularly to see what’s happening in the world of news, entertainment, and sports. This, of course, is what Facebook wants: to be our source for news.

So in order to mess around with this, I went to the trending topics section, chose about a half dozen of those topics, and posted the following status, just to see if I could take advantage of this feature on Facebook:

Mind you, I was just goofing around with this, and just wanted to see what would happen. Eventually, friends started clicking through and letting me know that I was showing up in those various trending categories (Monica Lewinsky, Willow Smith, Zac Efron, Clay Aiken, Wrestlemania XXX, Charlie Crist, Mark Jackson, and the Beastie Boys). And then Gini Dietrich provided photographic evidence, saying, “It worked!”

But those were my friends. Not a surprise it would show up for them. Eventually, however, people who had no connection to me started showing up and liking and commenting. While this was a silly little experiment, I knew I was on to something; something that could benefit businesses. Here, then, are three marketing tips based on Facebook’s algorithm:

Use Trending Topics

Three months ago I wrote about using trending topics, and as the feature has matured, I think there are some great ways businesses and nonprofits can take advantage of this. The key to this is to check the trending topics regularly, and when you find something that either fits in with your business, or is just plain entertaining, you can share it, with your own comments, thus getting you included in the trending topic feed for that particular topic.

Clearly, you don’t want to overdo this, and you want to make sure that you choose subjects appropriate to your sensibility, while not merely hijacking the news. But a well-placed and relevant share of something in the trending column might just get you more exposure to a wider audience. I’m going to play around with this a little bit and see what happens. In most cases, this is more about awareness than anything else.

Use Posts that Trigger the Right Comments

A recent change to the algorithm indicates that certain words will get you bumped up in the news feed. According to several articles, Mark Zuckerberg himself requested a tweak that put a bit more of a premium on what might be called “milestone moments”: birthdays, anniversaries, births, new jobs, and the like. These are certainly moments that are notable and people seem to rally around.

But the key is not the milestones themselves. The key is how people respond to those milestones: by congratulating us. So apparently the word “congratulations” in the comments section of a post will trigger the Facebook algorithm to bump that post up.

Now, before you go congratulating yourself in all of your posts (ridiculous? Perhaps. But I can see it happening), think carefully about how you are using Facebook. The answer seems to be posting status updates that are worthy of receiving congratulations organically from your audience. These could be announcing awards (either for your business or employees), employee anniversaries, birthdays, etc. Really, honoring any landmark moments for your business, employees, vendors, and customers would work. It could even be a shout out to a neighboring business, or perhaps a retirement of a long-time employee.

Give it a try, and see what works. There are all sorts of creative ways of doing this, as long as you don’t go overboard and do it too often. But again, this is more about brand awareness than anything. I’m pretty sure you won’t get congratulated on your latest sale, so think through this a bit, as this is more about awareness for your brand than anything else. You might even consider promoting some of these sorts of posts from time to time.

Avoid the Wrong Words

As the Facebook algorithm has changed, marketers have gotten more desperate, begging for likes, comments, and shares.

Wait. Who am I kidding? Marketers and businesses have always been begging for those since they first got on Facebook back in the day. And, while I admit that I have done this, the overall impact on the newsfeed is pretty ugly. It looks really spammy. So Facebook has made algorithm changes that will penalize you in the newsfeed if you specifically ask your audience to like and share and comment on your posts.

I like this tweak, particularly because they’ve thought through some of the obvious workarounds. For instance, even if you embed those words on an image, Facebook will spot them and push you down in the feed. So don’t try to game the system.

I think one of the most interesting things about this particular change in the algorithm is that while Facebook now allows businesses to conduct their own contests on business page walls, those are exactly the words many businesses use as part of their contests. Like. Share. Comment. Presumably, while you use contests to build an audience, asking people to enter using those particular words will get you bumped. A real catch-22.

I’m not sure if those are the only words that will get you penalized, but you could try to use other words. Or, this might be an indication to start using those third-party contest apps again, such as Woobox or Wildfire.

In the end, your best bet is to go natural and organic, and not try to game the system. Be creative in the way you post to your business page, and avoid anything that might even remotely appear spammy.

Give these a try and see what works for you. And remember: Facebook, like Google, is always changing it’s algorithm, so what works today, might not work tomorrow.

Have you tried any of these, or do you have any other suggestions?

  This article originally appeared on Inkling Media and has been republished with permission.
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Author: Ken Mueller

Ken Mueller is the proprietor of Inkling Media, with 30 years of experience in the media industry.
Ken is an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, after graduating from Inbound Marketing University with honors. He is also a certified Inbound Marketing Educator. He… View full profile ›

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