There’s an awful lot of anger bubbling up over an apparent change in EdgeRank that is limiting visibility of posts for some brand Pages. With anger often comes irrationality.
I should be able to reach 100% of my Fans!
I’ve seen that sentence, nearly word-for-word, more times than I care to count. It’s simply ridiculous.
Before I get to the hidden reason why this is ridiculous, the obvious reasons:
- Only half of your Fans are on Facebook during the day you created your post
- Others who are online weren’t within a several hour window to see your post
- Some of your “Fans” are fake profiles or dead accounts
Sure, the third may be included in the first. But all are worth mentioning to underscore just how impossible it is to reach “all” or even “half” of your Facebook Fans on a given day.
And I haven’t even gotten to the “Fans” who have chosen to never see your content again.
The Silent Killer of Reach
The typical user who bores of your content will simply unlike your Page. This is actually good for you. Not only does it send a signal about your content, it helps to optimize your audience. You don’t need these people.
Trim the fat.
The action that can kill your Reach: Hide All.
It’s actually not even called “Hide All” anymore. It’s still called that within Facebook Insights, but “Hide” is only related to single posts now.
To hide all of a Page’s future content, I now need to hover over the Liked button for a given Page and uncheck “Show in News Feed.” I can do this either while viewing an individual post or when going to that brand’s Page.
The big problem with the people who do this is that they kill your numbers. You will never reach them. They will undoubtedly be a Fan long past the time you stop managing your Page (because they’ll never be reminded of your annoyance), but they won’t see your content. Ever.
This means that your total Like count is somewhat padded. And depending on the size of this padding, it will negatively impact the percentage of Fans who like, comment, share or are even reached.
How to Check Your Hide All Count
Facebook doesn’t make this particularly easy, but you can find it. There is some work involved, particularly if your Page has been around for a while.
Go to your Admin Panel > Insights > Export Data. Then select Page Level Data and enter a range of about 200 days. I’ve gotten errors when requesting much more than that.
Within that document, run a quick search for “hide_all” (include that underscore) and search the entire workbook, not just the sheet. The first result is for the Daily Negative Feedback tab and Column D is the one you should be focused on.
Go to the cell below the last item in Row C and enter the following formula:
=SUM(D:D)
That will tell you how many people have hidden all of your posts from their News Feeds.
[Note: Sometimes, columns C and D are switched. No idea why. But keep an eye on it.]
Of course, that’s just this document. You’ll need to run additional exports until you get to the date when your Page was created.
Will some of these people have also unliked your Page? I guess so. But that would presumably be extremely rare.
How Much Dead Weight Do You Have?
I asked my Fans this question and received a wide range of answers. However, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that my percentage of “Hide All” Fans is higher than any other shared with me.
In about one year, 398 people have hidden all of my posts. This is almost 6% of my total Fan count.
I considered not even reporting that. But full transparency and stuff.
And hell… If I’m at that immediate disadvantage, I should be one of the people screaming about Reach, right? Well, I’m not. So I guess there’s actually something to be proud of there.
Additionally, this has quite a lot to do with my strategy of posting multiple times per day. Some people will hate that. Most will unlike my Page as a result. Others take this approach of hiding all (bastards!).
There really isn’t a “good” or “bad” percentage. If your percentage is too low, it may be because you aren’t posting often enough. Or maybe you aren’t controversial enough (meaning: you don’t have a voice). You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t aim to.
Where This is Leading…
There’s a reason why I wanted to find out this number. Everyone is complaining about feeling we should reach “all” or even “most” of our Fans. But I’m convinced that not even promotion will get any of us close to that number.
I want to find out the following:
How many of my Fans were online on the day that I created this post and scrolled through a time period where they could have seen it — but didn’t?
That’s the bottom line. That’s what I want to know. Until I know more about what that number is, I’m not convinced that EdgeRank is harming me.
And this is really just the surface of the things I’d like to know.
How many of my Fans are completely inactive this month? How many weren’t on today? How many were on today, but not when I posted?
The problem, of course, is that there’s no current measure to find out. The only number I can get is the “Hide All” total.
So what’s your Hide All percentage? Don’t be bashful. And don’t just post to brag. Someone’s gotta have a higher percentage than me! Share below!
