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The pursuit of virality is the bread and butter of every #SocialMedia marketing manager. Unfortunately, virality is elusive as Facebook’s algorithm is a black box to keep from being gamed.
While we will never really know the specific formula of the algorithm, we can make educated guesses as to what matters by studying page insights. One of the clearest hints came from Facebook’s announcement in January of 2018, that they will be optimizing for meaningful social interactions. According to Facebook, users will see content that Facebook assesses is meaningful to the user. Hence, content that is relevant and local, from trustworthy sources and informative will be prioritised over other contents.
To test this, I pulled the insights of four posts from pages I manage (see above) and I tabulated them (see below).
The following is what I discovered in relation to reach:
- Likes. Likes appear to have little effect on reach. #2 had 787 Likes and a reach of 19,279, while #1 had 44 Likes and a reach of 50,126.
- Shares. Shares disproportionately affect reach, but only if there are organic. #2 was boosted and while it had 61 shares, its overall reach was only 19,279. #1 was not boosted, had 80 shares and achieved 150% more reach.
- Reactions. Reactions do not seem to have…
