Managing News feeds on Facebook Wall and What They Mean to a Business Page

There are two types of news feeds on your Facebook wall. Top News and the Most Recent. When you log on to your account you default to the Top News feed.According to Facebook “Top News aggregates the most interesting content that your friends are posting, while the Most Recent filter shows you all the actions your friends are making in real-time.”

So how does Facebook decide what is interesting? Facebook’s algorithm assigns scores based on following factors or “Edges”.

1. Affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.

You have a Fan page for your business and have 10,000 people who have liked it. You posts a few messages everyday but they never visit your page, your Affinity score for those 10,000 people will be “0″

2. There’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment  has more importance than a Like, for example.

Remember:

Links trump Status Updates. Links are more effective at driving “user engagement,” which translates into people spending more time on Facebook.

Photos and Videos trump Links. This too goes back to engagement.

The power of Comments. More comments translates to more visibility overall.

For a business page therefore, it is not enough to have 10,000 fans and only 2 of them ever comment on your posts. Chances are that the 9,998 other people who have Liked your page will never see your posts because your posts show-up way at the bottom of their News Feed.In reality you have only 2 followers and not 10,000.

3. There’s the most obvious factor — time. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.

As time passes and people who do not visit your business page or comment on them become irrelevant.

All these scores add up to your “Edgerank” The higher your EdgeRank score, the more likely it is to be visible on a Fan’s ‘Top News’ feed. A score between 0-6 is below average, 7-13 is average, 14-19 is above average and scores above 20 are excellent. Go here to check your Edgerank.

You have more control over the Most Recent stream. Let us see some ways of customizing your stream.

To hide a person or a story type (e.g. a quiz):

Click the “x” that appears when you hover over a story you want to remove from your stream. Then, select an option from the drop-down menu:

“Hide this post” will remove the individual post from your stream.

“Hide all by [person's name]” will remove the post and prevent all future posts from that person.

“Hide all by [application's name]” will remove the post and prevent all future stories from that application.

“Mark as Spam” will remove the post and help keep your News Feed clear of similar stories in the future.

If you want to add a person, Page or app you’ve hidden back to your News Feed:

When you are on your Most Recent News Feed view, click “Most Recent” to expand a drop-down menu.

Select “Edit Options.”

A list of all people, Pages and apps you’ve hidden will appear in a pop-up box. Click “x” next to each one you’d like to remove from this list. Removing a profile from your “Hidden” list means posts from that person or Page can appear in your News Feed again.

Click “Save.”

To edit your general preference for posts you see:

When you are on your Most Recent News Feed view, click “Most Recent” to expand a drop-down menu.

Select “Edit Options.”

Expand the drop-down menu next to “Show posts from.” Choose either “Friends and pages you interact with most” or “All of your friends and pages.”

Click “Save.”

You can filter your News Feed to see specific types of stories. When you are on your Most Recent News Feed view, click “Most Recent” to expand a drop-down menu. Then select the type of story you want to see:

Status updates shows a feed of only your friends’ status updates.

Photos shows a feed of only photo stories from friends and Pages you follow.

Links shows a feed of only links your friends and Pages have shared.

Pages shows a feed of only updates from Pages you follow.

Friend Lists will appear in this menu if you have created them. Simply select the list you’d like to see stories about exclusively.

You can also select “Edit Options” to manage your preferences around specific people appearing in your News Feed.

When you are looking at the Most Recent view of News Feed:

Click “Most Recent” to expand the drop-down menu.

Select Filter by Friend List and friend lists you’ve created will appear in this menu.

Select the list of friends whose stories you’d like to see.