Like this post. Share this post. Tag your friends in the comments below. Vote in the comments with one of these emojis. This is what Facebook has become. You will be hard pressed to head into the worlds largest social network without seeing this type of engagement bait throughout your timeline. 

Facebook has had enough and has scoured hundreds of thousands of posts on Facebook using these tactics to develop machine learning technology to penalize these posts from getting the success they once had. This doesn't mean that you can't technically do these type of posts but it does mean that you won't get the same reach you once did.

Facebook did this type of policing previously with their ads, at one point if you had over 20% of text on an ad image then you would be denied. They then changed it so you could do more than 20% text but your reach would be smaller. Now, they have removed that restriction altogether and you can have as much text as you want on an image without your reach being effected, although I still notice ads perform better with less text. My point is, I expect Facebook to do the same thing here by putting out restrictions that will soon fall by the wayside because too many people won't comply.

What does this mean now?

If you are a social media marketing agency or page owner and you are using these type of bait tactics you can expect a lower reach. That doesn't mean they will necessary ban the post or unpublish the page but it does mean that your focus should be on posting relevant content that people engage with organically. Engaging and relevant content doesn't need to be asked to be shared or liked, people will do this on their own if they relate to the content.

Facebook states that their machine learning is well developed for this type of process and that good content won't be penalized for this, although if you are familiar with Facebook's current BOT and machine learning processes they definitely have their fair share of flaws.

The Takeaway

Facebook is hopeful that this will reduce business pages in creating fake engagement with these type of tactics but if you are familiar with Facebook's current machine learning technology it is far from perfect. I expect to be a slight reduction in reach but for the most part until Facebook gets serious with this type of strategy it will be business as usual as long as the main guidelines are followed.