The Facebook Team has just launched another metric tool called the Facebook Distribution Score for all business marketers (like jmexclusives). In order to help us understand how well your video content and posts are performing. Upon its release, this metric tool is now available in your Facebook Creator Studio.
In short, the Distribution Score in Creator Studio shows you how each post on your Page is performing. Based on metrics that are important for reaching more people with your content on Facebook. The higher the score, the more your content organically appears within feeds across the platform.
All you’ll need is to pay attention to the metrics driving the Distribution Score. If you improve these metrics, you may help your posts get more organic distribution on Facebook. That’s pretty great, right? So we definitely want to focus on improving that score so we can get better distribution of our Facebook posts organically.
Why is Facebook Distribution Score important?
On one side, it’s good to note that the organic Facebook reach is not dead yet. And, of course, when I’m saying organically, I mean natural reach with Facebook’s algorithm — and not through paid ads. So, we are talking about organic distribution of your Page posts, not paid distribution.
On the other side, however, paid distribution (Facebook Ads) never really hurts though. Simply, because it’s just going to help add fuel to that fire and help you get even more organic reach. Oftentimes, many people complain that their Facebook Page gets little to no organic reach.
Fortunately, one way to improve your organic reach is to start producing more video content. And then, use the new Facebook Distribution Score to help you improve the quality of your content for your followers. It is a slow and steady growth tactic that does not happen overnight. But I assure you my friends, organic reach is not dead.
How Facebook Distribution Score Works
Forthwith, the big question is; how does Facebook Distribution Score work? Or rather, how is it calculated? Well, for videos, it’s calculated based on the average of your previous 100 videos. What? Yes, a hundred videos. But, don’t worry if you have not posted over a hundred videos on your Facebook page.
First of all, get on that. You really need to start getting video content going! I know, I do too. That’s why we’re doing this together. If you have not posted a hundred videos, that’s okay. You need at least five on your page to be able to get this metric.
All right, to back it up, let’s answer the question about what is the Distribution Score? Well, it works by looking at five key metrics. Including Average Video Watch Time, the One Minute Video Views, Your Post Comments, Post Reactions, and Post Shares.
These are the 5 metrics that Facebook takes into account when calculating your Distribution Score. You will see a ranking for each applicable metric showing if it is higher, average, or lower than your typical averages for your Page. What is even better?
Related Topic: Facebook Likes | Cost Per Like & How To Increase Likes
According to thedigitalgal, “Facebook is scoring your post in comparison to other post metrics at that same point in time the post has been live for.” So what does that mean? Well, let’s look at it this way. Say you created a post two hours ago and you went and looked at your metrics to see how well that post is performing.
The video Distribution Score is going to look at that post at the two-hour mark. And then, it’s going to compare it against video content that you’ve posted in the past also at the two-hour mark of how long the post was live for.
When you go to look at that metric seven days after you posted, it’s going to give you average rankings based on all of your previous video content at the seven-day mark. Do you see where I’m going with this? It’s kind of cool. So, it’s a dynamic score that’s giving you a really good well-rounded idea.
Especially, of how well your video post is performing in comparison to your own previous content.
How to Find the Facebook Distribution Score
The next question is; where are you going to find this Distribution Score metric? Well, you’re going to head on over to Creator Studio. In other words, that’s by simply going to this link https://www.facebook.com/creatorstudio/. So, go to the Facebook section in the ‘Creator Studio‘ library.
After that, click on the ‘Content Library‘ tools, then Click Posts, and look at the ‘Distribution‘ column to the right of Details. From the Creator Studio, you’re going to go into your content library. Then you’re going to look at your posts and you can see the distribution score column right from there.
Perse, I still recommend ranking everything by video content posts so that you can isolate your video posts. As well as to have a really good view to easily compare how well your video content has been performing.
Analyze & Improve on Your Post Ranks
Technically, the fun part here is when you hover your mouse over top of your Distribution Score. And as such, it’s going to pop up a window with more detailed information and that’s where it’s going to break down your average view time, your one-minute video views, your comments, reactions, and shares if applicable.
And it is also going to focus on the one metric for that particular video that is having the biggest impact on your organic distribution. Facebook is basically shining a spotlight on the one area that you could be improving or that it’s having a big impact, positive or negative.
Likewise, if a video post is underperforming compared to your previous content, it’s a really good flag to bring your attention to. In order to help you understand why this didn’t perform as well as a previous similar post.
Understand Your Video Distribution
Basically, by taking a look at the Distribution Score and the metrics it measures, Facebook is helping us understand all the different ranking factors. Particularly, that Facebook is using to really fuel the algorithm and to get organic distribution going.
With our videos, we want to make sure we’re hitting that one-minute watch time mark. In addition, we want to make sure that our average video view times are continuing to rise. How? By keeping your content engaging, keep people coming back, and keep people watching longer.
It also comes in handy if video view drop-offs correlate to a habit of yours on screen. Or a logo or title card you’re displaying, or when you change from a talking head to a screen share. In other words, all of this is valuable information to help you understand where you are potentially losing attention spans.
Equally important, you also want to elicit comments and you want reactions. Bearing in mind, the combination of all of those factors are really going to impact the organic distribution of y0ur video posts.
How to Improve your Distribution Score
To better understand the distribution of your videos, monitor their Distribution Scores in Creator Studio. Use Distribution Scores to inform video production and promotions strategies. And also, use the insights provided by Distribution Scores to help improve your video distribution.
The Distribution Score is a relative score, comparing the performance of any specific video post to your average performance, and is, therefore, a good “snapshot” metric of performance. Paying attention to the metrics driving the Distribution Score will help your videos get more organic distribution on Facebook.
The metrics in the distribution score include:
Audience Retention / Average Minutes Watched: The average amount of time viewers spent watching your video before they scrolled past or click away.
1 Minute Views: The number of times your video was watched for 1 minute or longer.
Reactions: The number of reactions (likes, loves, etc.) on your video post.
Comments: The number of comments that viewers posted to your video over a certain period of time.
Shares: The number of times viewers shared your video over a certain period of time.
Start Putting Insights into Action
In order to increase engagement and grow your audience, you want your video content to be broadly distributed across the feeds of existing and potential Page followers.
When you know how videos are performing on distribution, you can make more strategic decisions about what video content to post and where to post it. Check the Distribution Scores for your video posts in Creator Studio for a quick way to understand how well your content is reaching your audience.
In that case, use the distribution insights in Creator Studio to inform your video strategy. If you find certain types of videos result in wider distribution and a higher score, you may want to post similar videos more frequently. That said, you can learn more about increasing distribution in the article, Understanding Video Traffic Source Insights on Facebook for Media.
You can also learn more about how to access and apply information about your video performance to help improve your content strategy in this video tour. But, if you’ll need more support, you can Contact Us and let us know how we can help you.
Finally, you can go ahead and take a look for yourself for more. And then, let us know if you have that score. It is starting to roll out for all accounts right now and I’d love to know if it is helping you improve your video content and what you think of it. Feel free to share in our comments section.
