Facebook Page Admins: Here’s a New Tip for Increasing Engagement With Links

Facebook link sharing

Facebook link sharingAttention, bloggers: Facebook released a helpful tip today regarding best practices for link sharing, information that could make a big difference in the engagement you see on your link Facebook posts.

Because of a recent update to Facebook’s News Feed algorithms, Page admins should share links through Facebook’s built-in link sharing option rather than by pasting URLs into text status updates, according to Product Manager of News Feed Ranking Chris Turitzin.

 

The Backstory

Through recent tests Facebook found that when people see more text status updates in the News Feed they tend to write more status updates, too (9 million more updates per day, as a matter of fact). Though Facebook increased the number of text updates displayed in News Feed, it noticed that status updates from Pages weren’t sparking the same level of engagement as status updates from friends.

As a result Facebook now categorizes status updates from Pages separately from those from friends, and will in turn display fewer status updates from Pages in the News Feed. What this means is that anything shared by a Page as a regular status update (even a link) will receive fewer views than media posted as its proper media type.

 

The Right Way to Share Links on Facebook

From now on you shouldn’t embed links into your status update, as seen below:

 

Instead, you can boost views to your posts by sharing links as links, like this:

 

Sharing links this way should increase your engagement on Facebook. Turitzin wrote in the Facebook Newsroom:

We’ve found that, as compared to sharing links by embedding in status updates, these posts get more engagement (more likes, comments, shares and clicks) and they provide a more visual and compelling experience for people seeing them in their feeds.

If you use a share button to push your articles to Facebook, this update shouldn’t affect the way you share your links. In the future, though, be careful not to paste links into the status update box!

How do you normally share links through your Facebook Page?

Lauren Mobertz

By Lauren Mobertz

Lauren is the former managing editor for DashBurst. One part geek, one part urban nomad, she is constantly scouting for the latest tech and world news. In the evenings you'll find Lauren running in strange places or attempting to dance salsa.