Facebook’s latest newsfeed algorithm update penalises engagement bait
Since February 2009 when Facebook first introduced the like button, it became the quintessential social currency in the digital world. People and eventually businesses craved for likes, it was representative of how much love and affection you received from people you wanted to engage with.
Likes were not just a social currency for people and businesses, it was a factor Facebook used to gauge the popularity of the content and prioritised it on people’s newsfeeds.
As with any other currency, people and particularly brands wanted more of it and out came one of the most popular weapons from marketers arsenal, the competition! Like us to win this, share it to get that became commonplace on Facebook newsfeed so much so that it is now being seen by Facebook as a spamming activity.
okay, so what’s changing?
The organic reach of your Facebook content has already diminished significantly with some people putting it as low as 2%, meaning out of 100 people that follow your Facebook page, only 2 will actually be reached by the content you post. With this latest change, if you use text on your post which invites people to engage in the form of likes, shares, comments, tags or reactions then your post is likely to be penalised by limiting its reach even further.
It is worth noting that business pages that systematically and repeatedly use engagement bait content would see their overall reach fall not just the reach of their ‘engagement bait’ post.
We recommend that you stop using copy or images that can be construed by Facebook as engagement bait and produce good quality content that naturally gets the engagement.
Image credit: Facebook
