Facebook recently published their content distribution guidelines, releasing information on how content is distributed and what types of content will be reduced on the news feed. Our team at Legendary has been studying the new guidelines and wanted to share our key takeaways today on what NOT to do on Facebook in 2021.
Engagement Bait
Any posts that explicitly ask users for engagement such as votes, shares, comments, tags, likes or other reactions are considered engagement bait and will be demoted in the news feed. An example would be:
“Comment a heart for the green car, press like for the purple car.”
Only engagement posts that have a specific call to action such as raising money, sharing petitions, or seeking help to spread awareness will be prioritized. Facebook implemented these changes after feedback revealed that users disliked spammy posts that asked them to interact by liking, sharing, commenting, or taking other actions.
Clickbait Links
Posts that bait users into clicking on a link by creating inaccurate expectations about the post or article’s content will be demoted. An example of how this is done is through the use of misleading statements like “You’ll never guess…” or “You won’t believe…” plus the use of punctuation like capitalizing letters and excessive exclamation marks.
Ad Farms
These are posts that contain links directing users to a website with ad formats that disrupt a user’s experience. This could be a web page that’s covered by visual and audio ads or autoplaying videos. Posts that link to a page that forces users to refresh in order to view the content, and therefore reload the ads again, are also demoted.
Low Quality Posts
This one is no surprise! Any posts with low quality videos, photos or direct users to websites that are low quality will be limited on the news feed. What to avoid:
- Posts with links that do not work or to websites that are poorly optimized for web and mobile
- Posts linking to events that are missing key details like time, location and/or sign-up information
- Posts linking to events that are hosted by an account, page, or group that shows signs of inauthentic behaviour
Sensationalist Health Content and Commercial Health Posts
Any content with headlines such as “Lose weight FAST with this miracle diet!” will be limited on the newsfeed. This was implemented after Facebook users gave feedback that they find these types of content misleading and harmful to the community. The feedback also revealed that in general, people dislike seeing health commerce promotions and associate them with spam posts.
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