Study: Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70%

Facebook Pages that automatically publish content to the news feed through third-party apps such as HootSuite, TweetDeck, and NetworkedBlogs http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2011/09/does-using-hootsuite-kill-your-edgerank/receive an average of 70% less likes and comments on their posts per fan, according to a new study by Applum, developer of Page tool EdgeRank Checker. The study says the difference is likely due to Facebook reducing the prominence of posts published by third-party APIs, and Facebook collapsing updates from the same API from across a user?s friends and Liked Pages.
As Likes and comments increase a post?s prominence in the news feed, driving more impressions and clicks, all Pages using auto-posting apps should look to switch to manual posting if possible.

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EdgeRank Checker?s Data

Now, EdgeRank Checker has revealed empirical data that automatically published posts perform worse than manually published one. EdgeRank Checker analyzed over 1,000,000 Facebook updates by more than 50,000 Pages with a combined reach of over 1,000,000,000 fans including duplicates. It then calculated the engagement ratio of the total Likes and comments on a Page?s post divided by the total fans of the Page the at the time of the post for the ten most popular third-party publishing APIs.
The study determined that compared to the engagement of posts published manually to Facebook?s web or mobile interfaces, the reduction in engagement ratios of the top third-party publishing APIs are:

• HootSuite ? 69% reduction
• TweetDeck ? 73% reduction
• Sendible ? 75% reduction
• Networked Blogs ? 76% reduction
• RSS Graffiti ? 81% reduction
• Twitter ? 83% reduction
• Publisher ? 86% reduction
• twitterfeed ? 90% reduction
• dlvr.it ? 91% reduction
• Social RSS ? 94% reductions

These averaged out such that posts published through a third-party auto-posting app saw roughly 70% fewer Likes and comments than those published through Facebook?s first-party interfaces. This is in part due to Facebook?s direct punishment of the EdgeRank of posts by third-party APIs. Also, if a user?s news feed contain multiple posts from a single API, whether from a single author or several different Pages and friends, the posts are collapsed and must be unfolded to be seen.

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