Facebook Algorithms and How to Deal with Them Smartly as a Marketer
The Facebook algorithm is one of the most important puzzles that users of the platform seek to solve. It may not exhaust the thinking of the average user of the platform, but marketers and content creators who rely on the platform as one of their sources of revenue for marketing and making money through it.
Facebook algorithms control the display of posts and their access to users, which in turn affects the popularity of pages and thus their performance. The more popular the content creator pages are, the better their chances of getting views and profit from ads.
To make matters worse, for branded pages or pages that sell products on Facebook, posts from those pages have fewer users than expected, which affects their revenue and sales.
In this article, we will explain Facebook algorithms and how to deal with them in a way that helps increase the popularity of your page and increase its profits.
To understand the nature of the Facebook algorithm, we first need to understand the meaning of the word algorithm. An algorithm is a set of programs used to solve a problem or perform a specific mathematical operation.
An algorithm is like a precise list of instructions to perform a certain action step by step. This list lies in a series of operations based on the operations of electronic devices and software.
Algorithms are widely used in all technical fields. For Facebook, algorithms rely on machine learning to control the platform and organize posts on it.
Facebook algorithms: These are the programs and automatic equations that Facebook uses to measure the quality of each post published on Facebook. Whether the article is from a personal account, a page, a group, a text, a video, an image, or a web link. In order to evaluate it and then display it to the appropriate user at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place on the personal page.
In short: Facebook’s algorithm appeared as a result of the increase in the number of its users and the increase in the number of posts published.
Of course, the amount of time users spend browsing Facebook is limited compared to the number of possible posts.
So Facebook has to choose from those posts to show you as a user, and this is of course not random, but is based on a number of criteria called the Facebook algorithm.
Important: Algorithms are named after the Persian scientist Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Algorithms were invented by Ibn Musa in the 9th century AD, and have evolved over time to become the cornerstone of many applications in our time.
Facebook algorithms determine which posts people see every time they view any part of the platform.
Any single Facebook user usually participates in many groups and pages, and has a large number of friends on the platform, all previous forum posts of this user should appear, but due to the large number, they cannot all appear in front of him.
Facebook algorithms control the order in which these posts appear, evaluate each post, collect posts, and then rank each user based on their interests. Algorithms also control the appearance of individuals in suggested friend lists.
Marketers and brand owners feel the greatest impact from the Facebook algorithm. This group of users uses Facebook for various purposes, such as; advertising, selling and monetizing services, and even attracting visitors to the platform to their website, and more.
Imagine spending hours creating visual or written content to promote your website or encourage customers to buy one of your products, only to find that your homepage audience rarely engages? Are you feeling depressed?
Losing out on a large number of visitors is more than just feeling frustrated or sad. Marketers and promoters on Facebook use the platform to maximize their profits, and failing to do so can result in huge financial losses.
Ultimately, Facebook ads are more beneficial than regular posting to monetize your online store or website. However, even ads that do not have a good understanding of the Facebook algorithm can have a negative impact on the results of your advertising campaigns.
At worst, this category of users finds that they spend a lot of money on advertising and get little or no return from it.
All of this reminds us of the importance of Facebook algorithms and their impact on the profits of marketers and promoters through the platform.
In 2007, a Facebook software engineer stated: “Only 0.2% of the news that interests each user’s personal account actually appears on their profile.”
This means that each story or news item is compared with 499 other stories in order to qualify to appear on your personal page.
This is in 2007, so what about in 2022?!
According to an article on Meta Platform (Facebook) titled How Facebook distributes content, the stages of Facebook’s algorithm can be divided as follows.
Facebook’s algorithms collect posts that can appear in a user’s news or feed, including posts from friends, ads displayed on the Facebook platform, and finally posts from pages, groups, and events they follow.
Of course, stories and short videos (Facebook Reels) have recently appeared.
In other words, Facebook’s algorithm collects and stores all the posts that should appear in front of users. Collecting and storing these posts makes it easier to categorize them, which will be done in the next step.
The second step in Facebook’s algorithm is to look at a set of details and information (also known as signals or mentions) to determine the relevance of these posts.