No wall posts, no ‘likes’ and other interesting Facebook facts

In an excellent mini-whitepaper  DoseOfDigital's Jonathan Richman points out five facts about Facebook Page I didn't know yet:

• If you turn off commenting on your Facebook Page's wall, you also turn off the Like function.
• Updates from your Page turn up in the "News Feed" of your Pagebook Fans' profile page. Most only read the top of their "Top News" (as opposed to "Most Recent"). So it's very important to rank high in your Fans' "Top News" feed.
• Whether your updates rank high in "Top News" or not depends on a Facebook algorhythm called EdgeRank.

What is EdgeRank?

EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine the order of items in your Feed. In the end, it’s really simple, as it has just three factors: affinity, edge, and decay.

1. Affinity is basically the connection between you and the piece of content. The more times you’ve interacted with the source of the content (Facebook calls it an “object”) in the past, the higher the affinity. For example, if you comment on your sister’s Wall everyday, content from your sister will have a high affinity score because you interact a lot with her.
2. Second is “edge.” [...] All that edge refers to the relative weight of objects. For example, a comment on a Wall Post probably carries more weight than a Like because it take more effort to post a comment. [Note: making your Page content mostly text will probably affect your Edge negatively].
3. Last, and simplest, is decay. This is the time that has past since the object was created. [Note: Updating content rarely will probably affect your decay negatively]

• In the Facebook page analytics tool Insights can give you an idea of the amount of impressions (= how many times your content was shown)
• Facebook Insights are only available for verified, authentic pages. To get a Facebook Page verified, you need to fill in this form.

Further reading:

• EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce That Makes Facebook’s News Feed Tick @ TechCrunch
• Why Your Facebook Page Doesn’t Exist @ doseofdigital.com