2 Recent Facebook Changes You Should Know About

Facebook this week announced 2 important algorithm changes which impact the types of content that show up in your news feed.

The first one is click- baiting

But what does that even mean?

We have all seen those posts that state some outrageous claim – for example – you will never believe what happened next, or, what happened next blew my mind.

Then you click through and it is just an ordinary story and the headline was just used to get you to click through hence the term click baiting.

The fact is that people want the headline to help them to decide whether they want to click through to read more, and they do not want to be misled. Facebook are very clever in that they know which posts get clicked on, and then they also know whether people actually stay on the site they have clicked through to, or click away straight away.

Facebook will penalise the ones who use misleading headlines to get the clicks by not showing those posts as much in the news feed and they know who they are because people will not stay on theses sites after clicking through.

So make your headlines enticing but accurate, and not sensational to get the click, because that may well backfire and result in a reduction in the reach of your posts.

Next link posts

We all know that Facebook organic reach is down for a lot of pages.

“Statistics show that text only posts get greater reach on Facebook, while images get greater engagement.”

Greater reach for text only posts means that some people have been posting text only or removing the image that Facebook pulls through from the link, in an attempt to get greater reach.

Or some have been sharing a large image and attaching a link within the description again instead of using the image pulled through with the link to get more engagement.

However Facebook now say that these tactics do not increase clicks on the link – rather the reverse and links shared with the pulled through preview get double the clicks.

Remember the difference between clicks on the photo and clicks on the link. The latter is preferable because it takes readers to your website.

Now Facebook will be favouring links that use the standard image that is automatically pulled through with the link, rather than with an attached photo, because that is the way that gets the most clicks and gives the user what they want which is Facebook’s objective.

So what does all this mean for you?

Study your Facebook insights to see which type of post does best for you.

If you tend to use this method of sharing images with a text link, then think about going back to sharing with the pulled through image.

Test for yourself – it does not mean the images will no longer perform but test to see what work best for you.

Personally I will continue to share large images for my own posts because I get better engagement that way, but also if I am sharing an article from another site then I will use the pulled through image.

It is all about testing to see what works best for your fans.

So, what do you think about the new Facebook changes?

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