Facebook is cracking down on “engagement bait.” Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term (it’s nowhere near as ubiquitous as the now-meaningless “clickbait”), you’ve probably seen an “engagement bait-y” post in your timeline. They use phrases like:
- “Like this if…”
- “Share if you…”
- “Vote to…”
- “Tag a friend who…”
Moving forward, Facebook will downrank these posts in the News Feed, meaning fewer people will see them. The Facebook News Feed doesn’t list posts in a chronological order. Rather, it’s curated by an algorithm, which Facebook says filters out content it perceives as “low quality.”
The move creates consequences for pages that repeatedly use this tactic. That’s because engagement bait is a pretty solid signifier of low-quality content. If you have to resort to these tactics in order to promote your page or blog, it’s likely it isn’t strong enough to attract people on its own merits.
In addition to downranking individual posts, Facebook says that pages that continually use engagement bait tactics will be penalized.
In a blog post, a Facebook spokesperson said “over the coming weeks, we will begin implementing stricter demotions for Pages that systematically and repeatedly use engagement bait to artificially gain reach in News Feed.”
The social giant is eager to stress that individuals who may write engagement bait-y posts for personal reasons — like raising money, or asking for personal recommendations — won’t be impacted by this. The issue isn’t people targeting their immediate personal network, but rather pages that can be viewed by the entire Facebook community.
Engagement bait is an incredibly effective growth-hacking technique. Perhaps the best-known example of a page using it to great success is Britain First — a once-obscure far-right British political party who quickly came to boast the most followed Facebook page in UK politics, largely thanks to its use of Facebook.
It quickly reached over a million followers thanks to its post, which typically contained populist rhetoric in all-caps, and usually contained some permutation of the words “SHARE IF YOU AGREE.”
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