fbpx

25% OFF ALL PLANS FROM NOW UNTIL JANUARY 15 – USE CODE NYEDGAR25 IN CHECKOUT

The Five Types of “Engagement Bait” That Will Make Facebook Downrank Your Posts and Demote Your Page

Facebook has made a no-nonsense announcement that every single social media marketer should take to heart:

They know people are gaming the system, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

Facebook has been pretty forthcoming in the past about explaining the major factors that determine who sees your updates, like your engagement. Generally speaking, the higher your engagement, the better your reach.

Facebook says that people have been bending the rules, though, and they’ve blacklisted a handful of popular tactics for scoring engagement – so you’d better know exactly what they are. 

(This is something they’ve done in the past, too – back in 2017, they created a filter specifically to catch people posting clickbait-style headlines and links, so they could restrict their reach.)

These restrictions in this post were first introduced in 2017, but we STILL see people using these “hacks” all the time! And Facebook won’t just restrict the reach on individual updates that break these rules, either – Pages that break ’em consistently will get demoted placement in the News Feed overall.

So, what exactly did Facebook outlaw, and how can you avoid posting the types of updates that’ll hurt your performance?

Let’s take a closer look at just what this means – and what is DOESN’T mean.

The different types of “engagement bait”

Facebook has identified five different methods of engagement bait, which they describe as posts that “take advantage of [the] News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement in order to get greater reach.”

They’ve created an automated system for determining whether or not a post is engagement bait, and that system looks for posts that fit one of these five models:

1. Vote baiting

Facebook reactions have been an increasingly popular marketing tool since they were introduced in early 2016, especially because of their potential for increasing your engagement on an update.

(After all, sometimes people want to engage, but not by giving a thumbs up.)

Reactions are also more than a little controversial – so you have to use them pretty carefully.

Several types of engagement bait depend specifically on reactions, and that includes what Facebook calls vote baiting.

Vote baiting is a tactic that encourages users to vote in an informal poll by choosing a reaction, like so:

The image tells you which reaction to choose to vote in a certain way, regardless of whether the emotion represented by that reaction has anything to do with the choice.

(You know you’ve seen a thousand Facebook posts asking you to click a sad face for a hot dog or a thumbs up for a cheeseburger.)

Facebook has said in the past that if you’re going to use reactions for this sort of poll, then the choices have to match the emotional intent of the reactions.

From their own guidelines:

Basically, if you want to create a poll that solicits reactions from users, those reactions have to be directly related to the actual content of the poll. Otherwise, you’re encouraging people to use them in a way different from their purpose: to reflect a certain emotion.

(How else can reactions get you in trouble? Keep reading – we’ll explain later on.)

2. Share baiting

Facebook shares are kind of a social media marketer’s dream – not only do they score you points with Facebook’s algorithm in terms of engagement, but they also plop your content in front of brand new eyeballs.

That said, encouraging shares isn’t always a good idea.

Telling your followers that sharing one of your posts will enter them into a giveaway, for example, is what Facebook considers share baiting. You’re asking people to share something not because it’s interesting or quality content, but because it’s a means to an unrelated end.

Does that mean that you shouldn’t ever encourage people to share your posts? Not necessarily – but if you do, it should always be on the grounds that the content is interesting, helpful, and relevant. (Not because you’ll send them a fruit basket for every ten posts they share.)

3. Tag baiting

Facebook wants you to tag people in images as a means of identifying that image’s subjects.

Which probably sounds pretty obvious.

(Because it is.)

But that doesn’t stop a lot of posts like this one from getting published:


This is what Facebook calls tag baiting – encouraging people to tag their friends and connections in an image that isn’t actually an image of them.

It can also include tagging people in the comments of a Facebook post, as well – this not only gets the tagged person’s attention, but adds to the post’s engagement.

Because while tagging people is a great way of getting their attention (and their engagement), it also isn’t what tagging is necessarily for – and racking up a bunch of engagement in the form of low-quality comments can be considered tricking the system.

Facebook hasn’t indicated that people tagging each other will negatively affect your reach, but if you’ve been instructing your followers to tag others on your images as a means of seeking attention or engagement, the party is officially over – this strategy is no longer welcome.

4. React baiting

We told you reactions would make another appearance on this list, didn’t we?

React baiting is similar to poll baiting – you instruct people to use reactions in a way unaligned with their intentions.

It isn’t necessarily in the form of a poll, which someone might use to voice an opinion, but may instead take the form of identifying or describing yourself.

Just like with poll baiting, Facebook’s big issue here is that it asks people to use reactions in a way that’s different from their intent.

Noticing a pattern?

Here’s one final type of engagement baiting that Facebook’s targeting, to really drive it home:

5. Comment baiting

Last one – and since you’ve made it this far, you can probably guess from the name what this looks like.

Comment baiting is when you encourage people to leave a specific comment on your post, like so:

The poster isn’t asking for a particularly insightful thought or opinion – they’re just trying to rack up as many comments as possible, because the more engagement they get, the better their post will perform.

This is what all the types of engagement baiting have in common.

They each encourage a different type of engagement, but they all ask you to use one of Facebook’s features in a way that doesn’t align with that feature’s purpose.

That’s why Facebook has ALSO explained what they don’t consider engagement baiting:

“Posts that ask people for help, advice, or recommendations, such as circulating a missing child report, raising money for a cause, or asking for travel tips, will not be adversely impacted by this update.”

If you’re using Facebook in an authentic way, and you’re not encouraging people to use features like reactions, shares, or comments in ways other than their intent, you shouldn’t have much to worry about!

Many entrepreneurs are still using outdated techniques.

Even though Facebook made their stance on engagement-baiting clear back in 2017, we will see marketers trying out these outdated techniques. It’s always important to test your own social media posts rather than blindly following others so that you can make sure that the strategies you’re using work for your unique audience. (Hint: MeetEdgar automatically split-tests your social updates to make this super easy!)

What do you think of the engagement baiting smackdown?

There you have it – not one, not three, but FIVE types of updates that Facebook says it’s time to stop posting.

What do you think?

Is this a welcome change for your News Feed?

Does it feel too restrictive?

Or does it not really make a difference to you at all?

Share your thoughts on this update in the comments below!

Social Share
Categories

Get Actionable Social Media Advice (And Not Too Much of It!)
Get EdgarNews, your monthly social media to-do list, delivered straight to your inbox.

Never Run Out
of Stuff to
Post on Social

MeetEdgar scheduling software automatically pulls posts from your content library to keep your social fresh everyday, on repeat.

30 Comments
  • Tracey MacKenzie

    I think they are good changes but I think that often people will tag a friend to alert them to a post rather than sharing it with them as it is easier for the person. So I wouldn’t like to see that be a cause of downgrading a page when its really a positive thing.

  • Angry Mancave

    They’ve already throttled down page views, so this is the next step. Goal being paid advertising of course. It won’t be long before they axe organic views all together.

    • Tracey MacKenzie

      Even paid advertising has noticed a fall (in my experience) since these changes. I never use any of those tactics anyhow, but I noticed a definite dive in organic and paid (boosted) post reach and comments since the changes. So I’m not sure if paying is even worth it anymore unless you have a mega budget of hundreds of dollars per post.

  • Linda Glaser Bradley

    I understand about this for my personal newsfeed page, but does this apply to Private or Closed Group pages as well? We make group announcements and tag each other to make sure a member sees the post. We also ask for comments on some posts for team giveaways. These folks are in the Private or Closed group for this very reason.

  • Molenda Arndt

    I think it should be allowed on pages or groups because some of us run our business with giveaways and playing games and these people are there in those groups on their own free will!
    This means that they don’t mind it and if they do then they just won’t comment, like or share which is also free will and isn’t that part of the point to having a Facebook. I see it as being restrictive and I don’t agree with it!

    • Tracey MacKenzie

      It’s not about groups, its just about pages. You can still run giveaways and play games but in a better and more constructive fashion than with tactics to go against FB rules. End of the day it is their company, they are offering you a free platform and a free page to run your business, so if you don’t like it, they have the attitude that they really don’t much care.

  • Shannyn Leslie Lyons

    Good to know! These kind of baiting techniques are really annoying anyway, so I’m ok with FB discouraging them. 🙂

  • ryannagy

    The key is intent. What you are describing seems like something legitimate. The tag or phrase starts a conversation and the person knows that. So there is a match between your intent and what the person wants. You are not trying to game the system so all should be well.

  • Niki Clark

    I think this is great, however, I have been seeing these “baits” constantly, I wonder if monitoring is really taking affect?

    • Tom VanBuren

      Facebook just started implementing it this week, so its effects might not be *instantaneous* – but should be making a visible difference soon!

  • IMHO_2

    I hate posts that will say “can I get a yes… or an amen”. It makes me not comment at all, when I might have otherwise. Being prompted for an answer or comment is a real turn off… and it always makes me think that there is an end user collecting id’s and information…

  • Laura Mann Weed

    Thank you for another super-informative post! Your blog always keeps us up to date on the things we need to know. I am so over every kind of click bait or engagement baiting that this comes as a welcome announcement to me. I would love to see folks finally get it, they ruin Facebook (and the interwebs) for everyone.

  • I thought that “tag a friend” was for tagging people in a comment, since that seems to be where most of the tagging happens with those contests on Instagram and FB. Is that also frowned upon?

    • Tom VanBuren

      That’s a great point – it can definitely be both! We went ahead and edited that section to include comment-based tagging. Thanks for bringing it up!

    • LukeSays

      I think that’s a “mention” Lara, but could also be considered a “tag”. Taggin happens in the photo itself, right? This is where it gets confusing, the word “engagement” means something different on Twitter than it does on Instagram or Facebook.

      Facebook used to call people who liked your page “fans” and on Twitter it was “followers”. Now it’s ALL followers… nothing like confusing things a little. 😉

  • Luci Gabel

    Thanks for this useful information! Always so awesome that you keep us up-to-date on these things. I like the rules! In fact, I am turned off by these kind of silly posts to bump engagement, and I couldn’t bring myself to doing it myself so… No loss here!

  • Tom VanBuren

    Gotcha! Then yes, it sounds like this one might fall into a bit of a gray area – it’ll be interesting to see if/how these policies affect messenger bots that operate like this!

    • Tracey MacKenzie

      I am not a fan of messenger bots at all. I may not have learnt about them yet, but I got ‘caught’ by one the other day and I didn’t like it. I didn’t know it was coming and it wasn’t immediately obvious how to get it to go away. It’s OK if I know going to a site or page there is one to help me (like going to the meet edgar page for example) but the bots that appear like a friend in messenger I just have trouble trusting them and their intentions.

    • Tom VanBuren

      Hard to say, but seems improbable that these rules *wouldn’t* apply to paid posts. It’s not unlikely that Facebook just won’t approve ads for posts that are engagement bait.

  • Roxanne Turvey

    Thank you for posting a link to the original Facebook announcement. This is the second story I’ve seen about this (although yours has a lot more information) and I couldn’t find the source.

  • Eric Ducoff

    In regards to “comment baiting” where you’re asking users to comment with a specific word/phrase, has Facebook expressed their viewpoint on if you’re using Messenger services like ManyChat which use those words/phrases to then start a conversation in Messenger? In that instance, the user is engaging to request more info, which is obviously much more valid than just asking for comments to boost engagement.

Leave a Reply