How to make Facebook’s algorithm work for your brand

Mark Zuckerberg’s 2018 announcement that Facebook’s algorithm will work to prioritise “meaningful interactions” from friends over brands has made it harder than ever for businesses to get their message seen through organic engagement. Since making the biggest social media platform algorithm work for you is an essential component of a successful online marketing strategy, we’ve prepared some tips to help you out.

How does Facebook’s algorithm work?

In January 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s News Feed algorithm will prioritise content from friends, family and groups that encourage meaningful interactions between people over brands. Meaningful interactions are classified as active interactions that encourage comments and sharing, as opposed to passive interactions such as likes and click-throughs.

What are meaningful interactions on Facebook?

Not all actions on Facebook are created equally. To increase your organic reach on Facebook, these are the actions you need to be taking.

1. Comments

Facebook’s new algorithm values comments higher than any other action. To increase the amount of comments on your post, you need to focus on quality content that is designed to trigger conversations between your followers. Writing about relevant topics that your followers will be likely to have an opinion about or asking questions will be sure to get the conversation flowing and increase your organic reach.

2. Reactions

Reactions, such as “like”, “love” etc. are the second highest interaction according to Facebook’s algorithm and will help you receive a small boost in the News Feed.

3. Comment replies

Replies to comments indicate that your content is inspiring conversation and is the third highest ranking interaction on Facebook. Content that encourages your followers to tag each other and engage in a conversation will give your content a higher organic reach.

4. Sharing

Publishing content that will be shared by your followers increases your organic reach and will be sure to encourage conversations to begin among users in the comments.

5. Engagement on shares

Finally, the more engagement that occurs on your shared posts, the higher your content will be ranked by Facebook’s algorithm.

As you can see, the most important thing to take into consideration when aiming for “meaningful interactions” comes down to creating high quality content that your followers are interested in. Research your market and frequently check your Facebook analytics so that you can better understand your audience and create content that will get the conversation started and make Facebook’s algorithm work for your brand.