This post on Facebook was originally written for my newsletter back in January. I'm making a handful of those emails public to highlight the growing list of benefits when you sign up to my Friday newsletter. More details at the bottom.

Websites try to keep your attention as long as possible, but the stakes are higher on Facebook where a drop in engagement can cost millions of dollars. Or FACEBOOK as it now insists on calling itself, like a shouty man outside a pub.

Content which keeps people on Facebook – like video or pictures – gets much more organic reach than content which sends people away, such as a link to your books on Amazon. Not only that, Facebook will also give preference to content which is genuinely engaging.

Please note the emphasis.

Facebook doesn't have an army of humans sifting through the billions of pieces of content on Facebook and giving a gold star to the best of it – AI does the heavy lifting here. The way the system measures engagement is necessarily crude: what is getting Likes, comments, and shares?

In simple terms, people want engaging content and Facebook wants to show them content with high engagement, so if you can post content which triggers good engagement levels, then that content will get much more visibility.

And visibility can be worth a lot of money, of course.

Some people will seek to game engagement because it is so valuable. And like virtually any cheap marketing gimmick, doing this is actually quite counterproductive.

I'm surprised that what is known as "engagement bait" — don't worry, I'll have some clear examples for you in a minute — is still recommended by so-called experts because Facebook's system has been pro-actively seeking out such content and vigorously suppressing it for over two years.

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