By understanding the Facebook algorithm, you can create content more likely to be seen by people interested in our causes. This can help you reach a wider audience, target your content more effectively, and measure the effectiveness of your content management strategy.
How Does Facebook's Algorithm Work?
Every time you open Facebook, Its algorithm goes through a set of four steps to answer the question: What content is likely to matter most to your readers?
Through the four steps posted below, Facebook determines what content you can show, what you know about the post, and how relevant it will be to people. These questions at each step help decide the best content to display to each individual on Facebook.
| 1. Inventory: What content has been posted by friends and publishers? |
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The inventory is a set of posts that are shared by your friends and the Pages you follow. You will see different kinds of posts depending on which surface (Facebook Feed, Watch etc.) you are using within Facebook. For example, Facebook Feed primarily comprises the content shared by your connections. |
| 2. Signals: Who posted this story? |
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For this step, Facebook considers hundreds of thousands of signals like:
It may also focus on small details they can discern about the viewing environment like:
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| 3. Predictions: How likely are you to engage with this post? |
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The algorithm then uses all of those signals to try and predict how likely you are to engage with a post, which is one way we assess whether or not you might find a post to be meaningful. Facebook makes predictions like:
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| 4. Score: How interested will people be in this post? |
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Facebook uses all consolidated signals to develop a relevancy score- a number representing how interested we think people will be in that post. Let’s say someone likes a local news publisher’s Page, and that Page just posted an article. It looks at various signals, like who posted it (one of the Pages you interact with most) and other engagements on the article (this one has numerous reactions). Then It takes all of this information, makes predictions and calculate probabilities.
It adds these predictions up into a relevance score, which is our best guess at how meaningful you will find this story. |
Other Algorithm Factors
- Relevancy: Content that resonates with your target audience's interests.
- Engagement: Content where the audience actively engages
- Recency: Fresh content that maintains visibility and reaches your audience.
- Sharing: Shareable content that provides value, evokes emotions, or sparks conversations.
Words to Avoid
- Threatening or violent language
- Harassing language, especially those that are sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist, and so on
- Words related to harmful stereotypes
- Slurs (word or phrase that is used to insult or demean someone based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics)
- Any other language that violates the Community Standards
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