Why should you comment and share?
So, if you are or aren’t a business owner, why should you comment on a business post?
How Your Social Media Feed is Determined
Andy Foote, LinkedIn Brand and Content Coach, contends that content that generates discussion is preferred, and subsequently rewarded, by the professional social network platforms like Facebook and Instagram to name a few.
This is why commenting is going to propel your post further and faster than a like or a share.
The most very basic way that I can explain how your Social Media feed is determined is this: They want to show content to its users that is high-quality and applicable to their interests. Likes, shares, and comments act as signals to algorithms that content is good.
Let's examine what likes, shares, and comments look like, how they're similar, and how they behave differently in your news feeds.
Let's take a quick dive into what happens when you like or share — and how these actions signal to the LinkedIn algorithm that there’s something interesting to see, extending the reach of a post. We'll also take a quick look at the new emoji reactions introduced.
Likes and Shares
One of the biggest differences between a like and a share is that with a like, you are passing along your approval without comment. With a share, you have the ability to give your own comment and to even @mention people you want to see the post.
Example of a Like
When content is only liked, you don't have the ability to pass along any comments.
A big advantage when liking, especially for the original post, is that a liked post will pass along the social activity of the original post. Your connections who like the post that you liked will be adding a like to the original content.
Example of a Share
A share and like appear similar. But in the share, a comment is passed along with the post. This allows the person sharing to @mention someone, such as in the example above, in which the author of the piece receives a shout-out. It also lets you add your thoughts on the article that you're sharing: why someone should read the article, your general opinion on the piece, why you found it helpful, etc.
Social media is all about engagement and interacting with your audience.
This means that when your followers and customers actually leave social media comments on your posts, you need to be responding – even if they’re not necessarily the nicest comments.
You mentioned News Feed Algorithm?
Each major social media platform has its own version of a "news feed" style algorithm. Below we’ll dive into the specifics of feed algorithms for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but here’s an overview of what the algorithms for these platforms factor in when prioritizing content.
Engagement
When you first create an account on a social media platform, you’re more likely to see a mix of random content that may not align with your interests. But over time, you’ll see the content will be more in line with your interests. How does that happen?
Social media platforms begin learning your interests and preferences very quickly based on what kind of content you engage with. Once a platform has a good idea of what a user is likely to engage with, they are going to prioritize that type of content in the user’s feed.
Time on Platform
Why does what you engage with matter so much? Well because the more time you spend engaging, the more time you’re likely to spend on a platform. When you spend more time on a platform, you’re susceptible to see (and buy from) advertising that is shown to you. And the more time you spend engaging on a social media platform, the more insight that platform has into your preferences, purchases, and habits.
Now let’s get into the details of how the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram algorithms work.
Facebook's News Feed Algorithm
Since the inception of the largest social media platform to date, Facebook's news feed has been focused on personalizing the social media app's user experience. According to eMarketer, we spend about 34 minutes each day using the platform.
To give users the best experience possible, Facebook's team of engineers are constantly studying user behavior and picking up signals that show what kind of content each user is most interested in.
How It Works
The Like button has always been the epicenter of Facebook's user experience — not only because we see it on everyone's posts, but because it allows us to personalize our experience (and influence everyone else's). Since it was first introduced in November 2007, it's helped Facebook's engineers figure out which posts were delighting users, boring them, offending them, and so on.
Nowadays, the algorithm that governs Facebook's News Feed has become much more sophisticated. It isn't just about the Like button anymore — and not just because reaction buttons are now in the mix. In fact, Facebook's algorithm is by far the most complicated of the three social networks covered in this post.
Here's a quick rundown of the most important things Facebook's algorithm takes into account.
Relevancy Score
When picking posts for each person who logs on to Facebook, the News Feed algorithm takes into account hundreds of variables — and can predict whether a given user will Like, click, comment, share, hide, or even mark a post as spam.
More specifically, the algorithm predicts each of these outcomes with a certain degree of confidence. This prediction is quantified into a single number called a "relevancy score" that's specific both to you and to that post.
Once every post that could potentially show up in your feed has been assigned a relevancy score, Facebook's sorting algorithm ranks them and puts them in the order they end up appearing in your feed. This means that every time you log in, the post you see at the top of your News Feed was chosen over thousands of others as the one most likely to make you react and engage.
Ads are given relevancy scores, too, so that Facebook can show users the ads that could matter most to them. Again, this is supposed to give users a better experience — but it's also helpful for the businesses that are paying for the ads. It's calculated based on the positive feedback (video views, conversions, etc.) and negative feedback Facebook expects an ad to receive from its target audience. (Learn more about relevancy score for Facebook ads here.)
Prioritizing Friends
Before 2015, Facebook was predicting what users want to see on the News Feed based on more indirect signals, like Likes, comments, and shares of others. Eventually, it added options for users to filter out posts they don't want to see. But what about helping boost the posts users do want to see?
Through studies and surveys, Facebook found that many users were concerned about missing important updates from friends they cared about the most. In response to these concerns, the social media platform began changing the News Feed algorithm to give more control to the users themselves.
It started in April 2015, when the company began giving priority (in the form of higher relevancy scores) to posts from friends over the Pages they follow and promotional posts. Later that year, in July, Facebook introduced the "See First" feature, which lets you actually hand-pick which accounts — whether friends or followed Pages — you want to see first at the top of your News Feed.
It can seem a little daunting to know the best way to interact with customers as your brand, so we will cover the different types of social media comments you’ll face and how to respond to them here *insert link*
