Facebook Is Now Fighting Engagement Bait With New Policy Change

As you may already know, Facebook keeps changing regularly. Their algorithms are always getting updated. This is sometimes good and sometimes not so good for business. But if you’re a seasoned marketer, then you are probably used to things always changing and used to adapting to it and well, this is no different. We just have to ride the way and continue to adapt to the changes.

Here’s one of the latest changes that Facebook has released. I recommend you take a moment to read it as you will find how this affects you as a page owner. The link is at the bottom, but if you’re in a rush, this is the just of it:

Facebook is going to demote posts that it considers to be purposely done by “gaming the system” to engage users more than it would under normal circumstances. This to me sounds like every time you post something where you are instructing your viewers to take an action to engage them, the programming will then demote that post. I’m sure the algorithm will learn along the way though. It will go through a process of calibration where it will find out what is likely written to game the system for engagement.

Engagement Bait?

So what does this mean? In a nutshell, this basically means that you shouldn’t post content that asks the users to engage because it is now against Facebook’s policy as they will now consider it as “gaming the algorithm.” When you post things like “share this with your friends, vote in the comments, comment this or that, like this if you agree” then your post is likely to get demoted, which means it will be shown to less and less people.

While this is likely to lower reach for many pages, some pages might actually experience an increase. I’m pretty sure their algorithm will “know” how often this has been done in the past, and how often it continues going forward. It’s probably overkill to go back and delete all posts that may potentially violate this new policy, in general though, I think the algorithm will “focus” on what it finds going forward, but if I was you I would start thinking in omitting these kinds of posts altogether from this point on. There are other organic ways to boost your engagement which I will talk in another post.

Read the Facebook article: News Feed FYI: Fighting Engagement Bait on Facebook

According to Facebook, it will take several weeks for the algorithm to calibrate as far as which pages will be affected and not as it continues to “learn.” But there you have it. Whether you are reading this at the moment this was released or sometime in the future, it’s good to know. Especially if you do these kinds of posts and are wondering why your reach is low.

Have you experienced any drops of engagement if you are currently doing these kinds of posts?