Adam Mosseri (VP, News Feed at Facebook) recently broke down the four steps Facebook uses to rank your content in the news feed during 2017’s F8 Summit.
He first explained that an algorithm is “a formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem.” He then presented a real-world problem to illustrate how it works; specifically, what to order his wife at a restaurant.
To find a solution he breaks it down into 4 steps.
Inventory – When you first open your news feed, Facebook’s algorithm takes an inventory by looking at all of the stories posted by your friends and the pages you follow (in the same way Adam checked to see what was on the menu).
Signals – Facebook then considers all available data and tries to make an informed decision about how interested you may be in a certain story. Facebook calls this data “Signals”. There are hundreds of thousands of them that Facebook considers to rank your content, such as who posted a story, what phone a user is on, what time it is right now, how much bandwidth you have, and so on. (More on these signals below.)
Predictions – Facebook then uses these signals to help make predictions and calculate the probability of certain outcomes; for example, how likely you are to comment on a story, share a story, spend time reading a story, and so forth.
Score – After making these predictions and calculating the probabilities, Facebook consolidates the information to calculate a “relevance score,” a number that represents how interested Facebook thinks you may be in a certain story. It’s worth noting that Adam made a point of stressing that Facebook doesn’t really know how interested you are in a certain story; it’s an educated guess at best.
To learn more about the Facebook algorithm and how you can use it to leverage the content on your Page, I recommend purchasing the Power Engagement Marketing course. The #1 thing that always works to get your Page content seen is ENGAGEMENT.
