#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Why Facebook comments are worth more than likes

A Facebook comment is worth more than a like, which is worth more than a click, according to Jeff Widman, co-founder of analytics tool PageLever.

The greater the engagement you have with your fans on Facebook, the more prominent position your content will be in their news feeds.

This is an important fact to understand if you are a journalist managing your news organisation’s Facebook page.

Speaking in this week’s Journalism.co.uk podcast on the best time and frequency for news organisations to post to Twitter and Facebook, Widman clearly explains how Facebook’s algorithm, EdgeRank, works.

Don’t just post like a status update. Post it in a way that tries to get people to comment or like. The reason you’re doing that is you’re trying to get people to take actions that explicitly show the algorithm that they are interested in your content.

Facebook is watching all the explicit actions the user takes. It is watching if a user comes and visits your fan page, it is watching if a user clicks on your content, it is watching if a user clicks like or shares. However, a comment is worth more than a like is worth more than a click.

If people are clicking your status updates that’s good, but you’re going to get a lot more glue (Facebook calls it affinity) between the user and the publisher if they’re leaving a comment.

Listen to this week’s podcast for or more tips on posting to Facebook.

Tipster: Sarah Marshall

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk: timing your Facebook posts

In Journalism.co.uk’s tech podcast tomorrow, Sarah Marshall will be looking at social media optimisation. Before that, here are some tips from PageLever’s Jeff Widman on Mashable for timing your Facebook posts to reach the largest number of people.

If you post often, you will see an immediate spike in News Feed impressions, but it’s generally not worth the cost in lost fans. When your fans see two status updates from you in their News Feeds, they’ll likely get annoyed, and will consequently unsubscribe or un-fan. There are few exceptions to this rule.

If you post too infrequently, you’re missing out on opportunities to reach your fans. Over the course of a year, a page with 10,000 fans that posts only half as often as they could misses more than 1 million chances to get their content in front of a hyper-targeted Facebook audience. The larger your fan page, the more often you should be posting — without annoying your fans.

See the full post on Mashable at this link.

Tipster: Joel Gunter

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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