Did you know that Facebook has an algorithm in place for what you see in your News Feed? No…?  Well I didn’t either, until today. It is called EdgeRank.

You may have not recognized it, but Facebook’s News Feed only displays a portion of the posts generated by your friends. (I always had my sneaking suspensions)… Well, this algorithm can potentially affect the reach of your Facebook updates.

The EdgeRank algorithm is said to be in place to enhance the user experience. In short, it is all about making sure that users see relevant and useful information in their News Feed. The measuring stick for EdgeRank is displaying information your friends found relevant by virtue of interaction. (i.e. commenting, liking, sharing).

From a more technical perspective, Facebook views every item that shows up in a user’s News Feed as an “object.” A good example of an object would be a person’s status update. Now, should any user decide to interact with that status update (say, by commenting on it) they are creating what Facebook terms as an “Edge.” Other interactions on Facebook can be actions such as tagging, sharing, and liking.

To explain how EdgeRank works, it is simple: The more interaction your posts get, the greater your EdgeRank. The greater your EdgeRank, the more likely your posts will show up in the News Feeds of a majority of your fans or friends (see, simple enough). If you are interested in your current score, you can check it here.

So how can you improve your EdgeRank?

1). Spread The Word!

Be sure to post and share links with others, such as photos and videos. Interaction happens when a user wants to investigate one of those posts or links. Not only can you post links to your own website or blog, you can also post information from other sources that you think your fans or friends might find interesting – it’s called being social, and it can potentially spread like wild fire and attract a lot of attention.

2). Stay Up to Date

Information on Facebook is shared at an extremely rapid pace, so in a short time your post can go from the top of News Feeds to the bottom. And users are more likely to share what is at the top of their News Feed than the bottom. Also, if a post starts to get feedback you are not looking for, you can post something new and swing the population back in the direction you intended.

3). Continue to Be Interactive & Ask Your Fans to Share

Even if you’re new to Facebook, don’t hesitate to ask other users to share your information or click the like button for your posts. A good strategy is to pose the question, such as “like this post if you agree with (fill in the blank)” This should help you to encounter less resistance.

Open Graph Protocol is something many people  have never heard of before. If that includes you, no worries – just keep reading. By the end of this blog post, you will know more about it (and how it can help your website) than most majority of people out there. If you are a person who likes to empower the circle of colleagues, please share this information with them.

So, Open Graph Protocol. What is it…?

In short, it is a set of meta tags that you insert into the coding of your website that will enable you to further integrate your website into the social network stratosphere.

Open Graph Protocol on Facebook allows you to tag things, such as “Like” buttons. By coding action items, such as “Like” buttons, you will have the ability to integrate your website into the Facebook platform, whereby users will be able to find links to your website through friends of theirs who have visited and performed an action on your site. 

Let me further explain because it gets really cool at this point:

Let’s say you added a Facebook “Like” button on your web-page (tagged it with Open Graph Protocol) and a visitor to your site decided to click it. Because you tagged the “Like” button, your website will integrate into the Facebook network and create a connection between your website and the visitor. That created connection with your visitor/Facebook user means your page will now show up in the “Likes & Interests” area of that user’s Facebook profile.

Optimizing the social action calls of your site with Open Graph Protocol tags can be quite powerful, and here are two reason’s why: 

1. It is obviously a social world out there on the web, so having Like buttons will go a long way until, of course, we see more traction with Google’s upcoming +1 Button.
2. Taking the extra step toward coding these button on your website with Open Graph Protocol will enable all your website to have more of a social presence.

Yes, Open Graph Protocol tags can go a long way toward helping your website in Facebook and around the internet. By using Open Graph Protocol your website will show up in same places that Facebook pages do (e.g. search).

First there was the “Share” button, which was then replaced by the “Like” button, now Facebook has added the “Send” button. The Send button is a new feature Facebook is hoping will be the next trend in sharing and a counter-part to the Like button.

The idea behind this Send button feature is to allow users the ability to share content with selected friends, and not spill the beans with the entire network.

As opposed to the extremely trendy Like button, Facebook’s new Send button gives users a level of privacy and convenience. Users will find that when they use the Send button there will be fewer required steps. Also, users will not need to look up email addresses of those they are sending too; instead, the feature will offer “auto-suggesting” for friends and Groups. Thus, as a user, you can kick-back and send content with only members you have approved to see.

Adding the Send Button to Your Website:

You can easily add the Send button to any existing Like buttons on your website, or you can add it as a standalone feature.

- If you are currently using the XFBML Like button, just include the send=”true” attribute in the code and you will create the combined Like and Send button.

- If you are using the iFrame version of the Like button will need to upgrade to XFBML to display a Send button.

You can generate the <a href= “http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/“> Like and Send button here</a>, or you can use the following code to create the combined

Send button:

<div id=”fb-root”></div>
<script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1″></script>
<fb:like href=”example.com” show_faces=”true” width=”450″ send=”true”>
</fb:like>

Developers can add a standalone Send button with the following code:

<div id=”fb-root”></div>
<script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1″></script>
<fb:send href=”example.com”></fb:send>