We looked for data to support this finding, but were not able to find anything substantial.  But our experience and the results we were seeing led us to advise clients against using Hootsuite or Hubspot for Facebook posting, specifically.  Instead, we suggested using these types of tools for Twitter and/or integrating between Twitter and LinkedIn or from Facebook to Twitter.

Our concern was the Facebook algorithm for selecting what shows up in users newsfeeds.  Based on today’s study done by Hubspot, there is evidence that as Facebook Pages were moved over to the new Timeline format at the end of March, the difference in impressions and engagement has become even more pronounced.

This article discusses Facebook’s algorithm, called EdgeRank, which uses three criteria to determine what specific ‘stories’ or posts show up in a users’ individual newsfeed:

1.  Affinity – number of interactions between the user and any page or person they are connected to
2.  Weight – number of times the user has interacted with the content in question
3.  Recency – length of time passed since the content was posted

Exactly how these factors come together to determine what shows up in a newsfeed is part of Facebook’s secret sauce, but Hubspot’s article is very helpful in explaining the dynamics, as well as some of the interest results they saw in their study.