There is also a little known but well recognized fact that not all Facebook status updates wind up in your fan’s wall stream. Huh? That’s not fair! But it’s true. What led me to discover this was from comments in the Travel Blog Project Facebook Knowledge Center about agents seeing a higher level of fan engagement by posting photos. I wanted to find if this was the power of imagery or are there other factors involved? This question led me to do a considerable amount of online research to find out what truth is.

• There is a widely accepted rumor that Facebook assigns a page rank to fan pages very similar to the search engines.

• Facebook has a default setting of Top News. Facebook does not include updates from lower ranking fan pages in the Top News stream. This means your updates never appear on your fan’s update stream if your page is not ranked high enough by Facebook.

• Facebook ranks fan pages higher that have lots of photos and videos. This seems to explain why many of the Travel Blog Project participants found posting photos was one of the best ways to get fan interaction. Thus, updates with photos seem to have a higher chance of winding up in your fan’s wall stream.

• The age of a fan page counts. New fan pages have a hard time getting ranked high. Facebook programmers like fan pages that have been around for a while and show consistent activity and fan engagement.

• You always hear about posting updates that engage your fans. Getting people to comment on your Fan page is a major factor Facebook uses to determine page rank. Thus, it may be wise to craft some posts with opinion, a bit of an edge or controversy and finish with an open ended question asking your fans to post comments.

• Facebook assigns higher rank to fan pages that have lots of clicks on the included links. This is the engagement you constantly hear about. Craft your updates to entice people to click on a link to your website or blog for more information.

Enjoy the Journey,
George