AUDIO INSIGHTS WITH DENNIS YU

Dennis Yu is a Facebook ads expert with over 20 years in the marketing and analytics space. He sees Facebook as a treasure-trove for the online marketer.

However, what do you need to know to understand the Facebook algorithm and maximize your reach?

In 2007, the algorithm was much simpler. If you could get enough people to talk about something, it would succeed. However, as more and more people started using Facebook, its algorithm became smarter and smarter. Today, it also looks at several other factors such as watch time, how often the user logs on, and click-back rates to show users relevant content. In other words, it is attempting to make an experience that the user wants to come back to.

The biggest factor that determines the power of a particular post is Engagement. Many things can count as engagements such as clicks, likes, shares, etc… All of these engagements hold different weight, but it is really important to analyze your data to better understand. For example, Dennis uses the ranking model of a “like” being worth 1-point, a comment 6-points, a share 13-point, a 3-second video 0.25-points, and a negative feedback minus 100-points.

Keep in mind that Facebook gives priority to video. Therefore, engagements with videos, watching it for 60 seconds as opposed to 3 seconds, holds a much higher value.

Yu recommends using “boosting” to help organic posts do even better. Don’t invest money into something that isn’t naturally working by itself.

When boosting a post, focus on two types of audiences:

• The first is type is people who would naturally like this type of post if it had more advertising reach.
  
  
• The second type, known as “inception boosted post”, targets influencers in your media space.

When boosting posts, don’t just focus on content that pushes sales. Rather, also focus on boosting informational posts, especially video. This helps bring many secondary benefits such as driving more future engagements.

The second biggest factor is content. People like to hang out with people like them. In other words, Facebook puts greater emphasis on engagements from your friend's group.

This is called “collaborative filtering”. In other words, Facebook’s algorithm really likes word of mouth marketing. Once people start talking about what they love in a real and genuine way, Facebook latches onto that and tries to find like-minded people. Therefore, it is important to build a strong community.

The third biggest factor is the K factor, a measure of what is popular at the moment. Decay is a big factor in a Facebook post’s popularity. Two years ago, a post would last for 4 to 8 hours. However, now posts only last 1 to 2 hours. To play the system, try to resuscitate old posts, not by reposting them, but by commenting on them. This strategy has been shown to bring about 1/3 the amount of engagements of the original post but allows you to exploit your evergreen content to its full potential.