Facebook’s Distribution Metric: Boost Your Post's Performance on Facebook Page

Facebook is a social media platform that helps you connect with your loved ones from all over the world. The platform has always been elevating its experience for people as well as businesses and continues to do so. Recently, they have launched a new metric called as "distribution score" for all business marketers to measure the performance of Facebook pages. This metric is present in your Facebook Creator Studio.

What is Distribution Score Metric?

Facebook’s Distribution Score in the Creator Studio displays your post’s performance on your Page. This score is calculated based on metrics important for reaching more people using your content on this social media platform. The higher your Distribution Score that many times your content will organically get displayed in the feeds across the platform.

You only need to keep a track of the metrics that help to improve your Distribution Score.

Importance of Facebook Distribution Score

Of course, the organic Facebook reach isn’t dead yet and not that here organic means without any paid distribution. But even paid distribution hasn’t had a negative impact. In fact, paid distribution has enabled businesses to increase their organic reach. Many people are always complaining that their Facebook Page gets little or no organic traffic.

Such marketers can start producing more video content to improve their organic reach. And then, try the new Facebook Distribution Score to enhance the quality of content for their followers. Remember, your organic reach won’t increase instantly, it will take some time. But for sure organic reach isn’t dead yet.

Working of Facebook Distribution Score

Excited to know how the Facebook Distribution Score works? Want to know how it is calculated? The score for videos is calculated depending on average of previous 100 videos. The number is a bit big but still don’t worry. At first, start creating video content. You will reach to hundred videos later but post at least five on your page for getting this metric.

The Distribution Score works based on five key metrics and they are Average Video Watch Time, the One Minute Video Views, Post Reactions, Post Comments and Post Shares. There is a ranking displayed for each metric in the range like higher, average or lower as compared to your typical averages for your Page.

Let’s understand the meaning of this. Suppose you created a post two hours ago and you checked your metrics to see the performance of your post. The video Distribution Score of that post will be calculated at the two hour mark and this score will be compared against video content posted in the past also at the two hour mark of the number of days and hours the post was live for.

When you check the score seven days after you posted, you will get average rankings based on all of your previous video content at the seven day mark. It is a dynamic score that enables you to get the complete idea on the performance of your video post in comparison to your own previous content.

The Calculation of Distribution Score

Distribution Scores are calculated based on the particular performance of your Page. It is calculated as below:

• Video: Video Distribution Score is generally calculated as the average of your last 100 published videos. Additionally, the videos are compared at particular timings. For example, if the video you are looking at has been published 2 hours ago, its performance is compared to the average of your 100 previously published videos at the 2 hour mark.
• Photos, links and text: This Distribution Score is calculated with the help of impressions. Comparisons are based on specific content-type. Hence, photo’s performance is compared to previous photo’s performance, and link’s performance is compared to previous link’s performance.

Important Metrics for Video

Check the metrics that improve your Distribution Score. If you work on these metrics, your posts will get more organic distribution on Facebook.

Name of the Metric

Definition of the Metric

Audience Retention / Average Minutes Watched

The average amount of time people viewed your video.

1 Minute Views

The total time your video was watched for time span of 1 minute or longer.

Reactions

The total reactions (likes, shares, etc.) of viewers on your video post.

Comments

The total comments posted by viewers to your video during a certain time period.

Shares

The couple of times your video was shared by the viewers for particular amount of time.

Important Metrics for Photos, Texts and Links

Name of the Metric

Definition of the Metric

Impressions

The amount of time your content was live. Distribution score for photos, text and link content is calculated with the help of impressions.

Reactions

The total reactions (likes, shares, etc.) of viewers on your post.

Comments

The total comments posted by viewers on your post over a specific period of time.

Shares

The amount of time your post was shared by the viewers over a specific period of time.

Content Clicks

The total clicks on links or photos within posts that took viewers to destinations or experiences, on or off Facebook.

Tips to Improve Your Distribution Score

There are many factors affecting the time, location and way, videos appear on Facebook. The features used for determining the distribution score are always changing when Facebook learns about people’s interests, but are few that have a great affect on distribution for videos.

Engagement

You content on Facebook should start conversations and meaningful interactions between people. Therefore the distribution number for videos is set to 100 as this will inspire person-to-person or friend-to-friend engagement. For increasing engagement follow the below tricks:

Ask questions such that you will get more responses

Questions that have pre-defined answers (e.g. "Which is the month were you born in?") are highly possible to get high engagements.

Directly connect with your audience

Actively contribute to the comments section of your posts. When you interact with your audience personally, your brand appears to be friendlier and serves more valuable connections around your content.

Use the post's description field for goals

Tell about your brand and content to viewers. Mention your Page’s link and allow viewers to know the benefit they would get, if they follow your Page.

Don't post clickbait

Clickbait's are call-to-actions such as "Comment 'YES' if you agree", "Tag a friend" or "Like and share this post!"

Don’t tell viewers to react as you want them to

Don’t instruct viewers to "tag", "like" or "share" as it might flag your content for engagement baiting.

Don't entertain Pages that offer sharing schemes

Other Pages having high follower count, sometimes ask you to share their posts to increase their reach. This is known as sharing scheme. If you go for it might reduce your distribution and it would become risky to access monetization programmes such as in-stream ads.

Originality

Original videos display the unique voice and value of the Page that creates them. These videos are unique, have an objective and comprise of a footage that isn’t found on Facebook. Hence content that has less originality gets lower distribution. This is because the creators and publishers that work hard for crafting and promoting the authentic and valuable content need to be rewarded.

Publish videos scripted, shot and edited by you

Ensure that your Page participates maximum in creating videos it posts as this will help you to create original content required by Facebook’s distribution system.

Search your voice

May you be informal or formal, quick to laugh, have a characteristic trait or habit, etc. just love it.

Check for other people's copyrights and trademarks when using content

Ensure that you can publish the content you have written. It means check if the content is copyright, has trademark or other legal rights. If so, you shouldn’t use it and respect it. It is the rule of Distribution Score metric.

Don't copy and paste content as it is

There is no harm in using content from other sources in your posts but you should increase its value through creative editing, commentary or voiceover. This adds relevancy to it.

Avoid using content made by others

Don't collect and post videos already published by other Pages or third-party content creators.

Avoid posting duplicate content

Don’t post existing Facebook content or the one that is posted somewhere else first and you haven’t done anything meaningful for it on your Page. It is always good to repost a content that you have made on your own.

Loyalty

When your content is viewed for several times, your distribution score automatically increases. May it be week-after-week or episode-to-episode in a catch-up session, the frequency of viewers that return to watch your content and the number of views you retain weekly is noted.

Post again and again

Keep publishing video content either daily or weekly to encourage viewers to check new episodes.

• Comment and reply to questions

Your casual viewers can be your loyal fans when you start responding to their questions and comments. You can get an idea for new themes and episodes from the viewer comments too.

• Publish extra content other than your regular posts

Apart from your regularly scheduled videos, connect with your fans and improve engagement by posting content in between. It may include live videos, stories or even hosting a Q&A.

• Don't pay for getting followers

Boosting your posts or publishing an ad on Facebook helps you to gain new followers and boost loyalty. Don’t trust anyone who says that they can get you Facebook followers if you pay them.

• Don't use words to bait followers to your Page

You should get new followers, but don’t use words such as "Follow my Page" or "Follow us".

Retention

As per a research, people on Facebook find longer videos that tell a story more valuable. Hence, priority is given to long content that is narrative and convincing enough to attract people.

Post videos longer than three minutes

Facebook gives more priority to videos that are three minutes or longer, because as per the research this is the perfect time for telling stories that viewers love.

• Keep viewers engaged until the end

As per the research, longer videos that have a storyline are considered to be more valuable by Facebook viewers. Longer videos (three minutes or more) are given high priority as they inspire people to continue watching. Ensure that the planning of your video's start, tension, build-up, pacing and payoff is done in such a way that it will catch a viewer's attention and hold it until the end.

• Don't lure viewers

Do you like someone asking you to follow them? No right. Facebook can easily detect and devalue artificial attempts for improving the watch times by overstating details and ignoring important information.

Don't post videos that are images in motion

Don’t use still images and use content that is perfect for a video’s capacity to capture motion and movement. A video without much of motion won’t engage your viewers for long time.

The Bottom Line

Now that you know everything about the Distribution Score of Facebook, ensure to take the advantage of it. Concentrate on the key metrics for the score to increase your distribution score. Also, avoid content copying and pasting as it is. This won’t add value and will decrease your engagement. Do let us know about your score and share the queries with us.