Meta announced that it will implement stronger measures against accounts sharing “unoriginal” content on Facebook.
This marks the second major platform policy update in days following YouTube’s similar announcement about mass-produced and repetitive content.
Meta revealed it has removed approximately 10 million profiles impersonating large content creators, and taken action against 500,000 accounts involved in “spammy behavior or fake engagement”.
A Platform-Wide Movement Against Content Farms
Meta’s announcement closely follows YouTube’s monetization update, which clarified its stance on “inauthentic” content.
Both platforms are addressing the growing problem of accounts profiting from reposting others’ work without permission or meaningful additions.
According to Meta, accounts that repeatedly reuse someone else’s videos, photos, or text posts will lose access to Facebook’s monetization programs and face reduced visibility across all content.
Facebook is also testing a system that adds links on duplicate videos to direct viewers to the original creator.
Here’s an example of what that will look like on a reposted video:
Screenshot from: creators.facebook.com/blog/combating-unoriginal-content, July 2025.
Meta stated in its official blog post:
“We believe that creators should be celebrated for their unique voices and perspectives, not drowned out by copycats and impersonators.”
What Counts As Unoriginal Content?
Both Meta and YouTube distinguish between unoriginal content and transformative content, like reaction videos or commentary.
Meta emphasizes that content becomes problematic when creators repost others’ material without permission or meaningful enhancements, such as editing or voiceover.
YouTube creator liaison Renee Richie offered a similar clarification ahead of its own update, stating:
“This is a minor update to YouTube’s long-standing YPP policies to help better identify when content is mass-produced or repetitive”.
How AI & Automation Factor In
Neither platform bans AI-generated content outright. However, their recent updates appear designed to address a wave of low-quality, automated material that offers little value to viewers.
YouTube affirms that creators may use AI tools as long as the final product includes original commentary or educational value, with proper disclosure for synthetic content.
Meta’s guidelines similarly caution against simply “stitching together clips” or relying on recycled content, and encourage “authentic storytelling.”
These concerns implicitly target AI-assisted compilations that lack originality.
Potential Impact
For content creators, the updates from Meta and YouTube reinforce the importance of originality and creative input.
Those who produce reaction videos, commentary, or curated media with meaningful additions are unlikely to be affected. They may even benefit as spammy accounts lose visibility.
On the other hand, accounts that rely on reposting others’ content with minimal editing or variation could see reduced reach and loss of monetization.
To support creators, Meta introduced new post-level insights in its Professional Dashboard and a tool to check if a page is at risk of distribution or monetization penalties. YouTube is similarly offering guidance through its Creator Liaison and support channels.
Best Practices For Staying Compliant
To maintain monetization eligibility, Meta recommends:
Posting primarily original content filmed or created by the user.
Making meaningful enhancements such as editing, narration, or commentary when using third-party content.
Prioritizing storytelling over short, low-effort posts.
Avoiding recycled content with watermarks or low production value.
Writing high-quality captions with minimal hashtags and capitalization.
Looking Ahead
Meta and YouTube’s updates indicate a wider industry move against unoriginal content, especially AI-generated “slop” and content farms.
While the enforcement rollout may not affect every creator equally, these moves indicate a shift in priorities. Originality and value-added content are becoming the new standard.
The era of effortless monetization through reposting is being phased out. Moving forward, success on platforms like Facebook and YouTube will depend on creative input, storytelling, and a commitment to original expression.
Are you tired of your social media efforts not achieving the results you hoped for? It might be time to scale up your social media optimization efforts. Your content might be good, but you could do various enhancements to make it stand out. For instance, your content needs proper metadata for X, Facebook, and the like to appear properly on each platform. Yoast SEO can help you do this quickly.
Table of contents
Sharing your freshly written (or optimized) content on social media is important. It helps you stay in touch with your audience and update them on news about your business and related topics. But to get their attention, you need to optimize your social media posts before you share them.
In this article, we’ll explain how you can optimize your posts for Facebook and X, and how our plugin can help you with that! Lastly, we’ll briefly discuss Pinterest and the use of Rich Pins.
Social media optimization is about improving how you use social media platforms to build your online presence. You do this not only by creating and sharing content for every platform you’d like to be active on but also by optimizing that content in such a way that you get traffic to your site. The goal is to build strong connections with your audience and to keep them engaged.
Social media optimization starts with well-optimized, highly relevant content that grabs attention. For most platforms, images and video are best suited for this. You can test various formats and ideas to see what your audience prefers. You can use any of the social media analytics tools to do this. Also, find the best times to publish your content to get the best engagement. Your posts should also have metadata for specific platforms like X Cards or OpenGraph for Facebook to help these platforms understand your content.
After posting, remember to engage with your audience. Respond to comments, participate in discussions, and listen to what people say about you and your content. Track your best-performing posts and use data to improve your content to stay relevant and engaging.
Promoting your content on various platforms makes sense in most cases. Remember to share your articles, videos, and other content on whatever social media network makes sense for you and your audience. Read this article if you don’t know where to begin with your social media strategy.
Facebook and other social media
Years ago, Facebook introduced OpenGraph to determine which elements of your page you want to show when someone shares that page. Several social networks and search engines use Facebook’s OpenGraph, but the main reason for adding it is for Facebook itself. Facebook’s OpenGraph support is continuously evolving, but the basics are simple. With a few pieces of metadata, you declare:
What’s the name of the site and the title of the page?
What’s the page about?
Which image/images should be shown when this post or page is shared on Facebook?
Social media preview in Yoast SEO
When you use Yoast SEO, most of the values above are filled out automatically based on your post’s data. It uses the locale of your site, the site’s name, SEO title, the canonical, the meta description value, etc, to fill out most of the required OpenGraph tags. You can see what your post will look like when you click on ‘Social media appearance’ in the Yoast SEO sidebar:
You’ll notice the Social media appearance button in the sidebar opening the modal for the feature
This preview tab allows you to edit how your Facebook post is shown when shared. Our plugin lets you change your social image, title, and description in your preview. This makes your social media optimization much quicker and easier, as you won’t have to leave your post to make these changes.
Make more impact on social media with Yoast SEO Premium!
Get Yoast SEO Premium today and make it quick and easy to manage how your social media snippets look.
If you use the options for social media optimization in Yoast SEO, your Facebook post could look like this when you share the URL of a post or page:
Example of a Facebook post as seen on Yoast’s profile
So what do you need to do?
First, go to Yoast SEO → Settings → Site representation, and fill in your social media accounts.
Afterward, go to Yoast SEO → Settings → Social sharing, and make sure OpenGraph is enabled.
Then, set a good default image under the site basics settings. This image is used when you have a post or page that does not contain an image. It’s important to set this image to ensure that every post or page has an image when shared. Facebook is forgiving when uploading images, but 1200px by 630px should work well.
You can complete all of these steps in a few minutes. After that, Yoast SEO takes all of the work out of your hands. However, it is important to remember that Facebook sometimes doesn’t immediately pick up changes. So, if you want to “debug” how Facebook perceives your page, enter your URL in the Facebook Sharing Debugger and click the Debug button. If the preview that you see there isn’t the latest version, you can try the Scrape again button. But remember that it can take a while for Facebook to see your changes.
OpenGraph for Video Content
If you have video content, you must do more work unless you use our Video SEO plugin. This plugin handles all the needed metadata and lets you share your videos on Facebook.
X
X’s functionality is quite similar to Facebook’s. The name of this functionality is X Cards. X “falls back” on Facebook OpenGraph for several of these values, so we don’t have to include everything. But it still is quite a bit. We’re talking about:
the type of content/type of card
an image
a description
the X account of the site/publisher
the X account of the author
the “name” for the domain to show in an X card
X preview in Yoast SEO
As you might have seen in Yoast SEO, optimizing your X listings is also an option. Simply click that tab to preview how your page appears when it gets shared to X. By default, the plugin uses the title, description and image you enter in the search appearance preview. Of course, this tab allows you to change these for your Twitter post.
Here’s an example of what your post could look like with all the required metadata our plugin helps you add:
An example of a post on Yoast’s X profile
So what do you need to do?
Ensure X card metadata is enabled by going to Yoast SEO → Settings → Site features → Social sharing and activating the X feature. This leaves a couple of values for you to fill out in the settings, which you can do using this guide on activating X Cards in Yoast SEO.
Do you spend a lot of time tweaking the preview appearance of each page or post? You’ll be glad to know that Yoast SEO Premium also offers a very helpful feature: the ability to set default templates for your social snippets. With this powerful feature, you can design the ideal social appearance for all your content and feel certain that the output will always look great to whoever is sharing it.
Use variables to set up templates to optimize your social media postings
What about Pinterest?
Pinterest’s Rich Pins allow for OpenGraph markup as well. Add variables like product name, availability, price, and currency to your page to create a rich pin. As this is mainly interesting for products, we decided to add functionalities to create rich pins to our Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin.
So, go ahead and use Yoast SEO to optimize your social media. It isn’t very hard; it just takes a few minutes of your time, and you will reap the rewards immediately. As these social networks add new features, we’ll keep our plugin and this article up-to-date. So, be sure to update the Yoast SEO plugin regularly.
Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.
Last week, I joined over 3,200 digital rights activists, tech policymakers, and researchers and a smattering of tech company representatives in Taipei at RightsCon, the world’s largest digital rights conference.
Human rights conferences can be sobering, to say the least. They highlight the David vs. Goliath situation of small civil society organizations fighting to center human rights in decisions about technology, sometimes challenging the priorities of much more powerful governments and technology companies.
But this year’s RightsCon, the 13th since the event began as the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in 2011, felt especially urgent. This was primarily due to the shocking, rapid gutting of the US federal government by the Elon Musk–led DOGE initiative, and the reverberations this stands to have around the world.
At RightsCon, the cuts to USAID were top of mind; the development agency has long been one of the world’s biggest funders of digital rights work, from ensuring that the internet stays on during elections and crises around the world to supporting digital security hotlines for human rights defenders and journalists targeted by surveillance and hacking. Now, the agency is facing budget cuts of over 90% under the Trump administration.
The withdrawal of funding is existential for the international digital rights community—and follows other trends that are concerning for those who support a free and safe Internet. “We are unfortunately witnessing the erosion … of multistakeholderism, with restrictions on civil society participation, democratic backsliding worldwide, and companies divesting from policies and practices that uphold human rights,” Nikki Gladstone, RightsCon’s director, said in her opening speech.
Cindy Cohn, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital civil liberties, was more blunt: “The scale and speed of the attacks on people’s rights is unprecedented. It’s breathtaking,” she told me.
But it’s not just funding cuts that will curtail digital rights globally. As various speakers highlighted throughout the conference, the United States government has gone from taking the leading role in supporting an open and safe internet to demonstrating how to dismantle it. Here’s what speakers are seeing:
The Trump administration’s policies are being weaponized in other countries
“The (Serbian) Special Anti-Corruption Department … contacted the US Justice Department for information concerning USAID over the abuse of funds, possible money laundering, and the improper spending of American taxpayers’ funds in Serbia,” Nenad Stefanovic, a state prosecutor, explained on a TV broadcast announcing the move.
“Since Trump’s second administration, we cannot count on them [the platforms] to do even the bare minimum anymore.” —Yasmin Curzi
For RightsCon attendees, it was a clear—and familiar—example of how oppressive regimes find or invent reasons to go after critics. Only now, by using the Trump administration’s justifications for revoking USAID’s funding, they hope to gain an extra veneer of credibility.
Ashnah Kalemera, a program manager for CIPESA, a Ugandan nonprofit that runs technology for civic participation initiatives across Africa, says Trump and Musk’s attacks on USAID are providing false narratives that “justify arrests, intimidations, and continued clampdowns on civil society organizations—organizations that obviously no longer have the resources to do their work anyway.”
Yasmin Curzi, a professor at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro and an expert on digital law, says that American politics are also being weaponized in Brazil’s domestic affairs. There, she told me, right-wing figures have been “lifting signs at protests like ‘Trump save us!’ and ‘Protect our First Amendment rights,’ which they don’t have.” Instead, Brazil’s Internet Bill of Rights seeks to balance protections on user privacy and speech with criminal liabilities for certain types of harmful content, including disinformation and hate speech.
Despite the differing legal frameworks, in late February the Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, and the video platform Rumble tried to enforce US-style speech protections in Brazil. They sued Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes for banning a Brazilian digital influencer who had fled to the United States to avoid arrest in connection with allegations that he has spread disinformation and hate. Truth Social and Rumble allege that Moraes has violated the United States’ free speech laws.
(A US judge has since ruled that because the Brazilian court had yet to officially serve Truth Social and Rumble as required under international treaty, the platforms’ lawsuit was premature and the companies do not have to comply with the order; the judge did not comment on the merits of the argument, though the companies have claimed victory.)
Platforms are becoming less willing to engage with local communities
In addition to how Trump and Musk might inspire other countries to act, speakers also expressed concern that their trolling and use of dehumanizing language and imagery will inspire more online hate (and attacks), just at a time when platforms are rolling back human content moderation. Experts warn that automated content moderation systems trained on English-language data sets are unable to detect much of this hateful language.
India, for example, has a history of platforms’ recognizing the necessity of using local-language moderators and also failing to do so, leading to real-world violence. Yet now the attitude of some internet users there has become “If the president of the United States can do it, why can’t I?” says Sadaf Wani, a communications manager for IT for Change, an Indian nonprofit research and advocacy organization, who organized a RightsCon panel onhate speech and AI.
As her panel noted, these online attacks are accompanied by an increase in automated and even fully AI-based content moderation, largely trained on North American data sets, that are known to be less effective at identifying problematic speech in languages other than English. Even the latest large language models have difficulties identifying local slang, cultural context, and the use of non-English characters. “AI is not as smart as it looks, so you can use very obvious [and] very basic tricks to evade scrutiny. So I think that’s what’s also amplifying hate speech further,” Wani explains.
Others, including Curzi from Brazil and Kalemera from Uganda, described similar trends playing out in their countries—and they say changes in platform policy and a lack of local staff make content moderation even harder. Platforms used to have humans in the loop whom users could reach out to for help, Curzi said. She pointed to community-driven moderation efforts on Twitter, which she considered to be a relative success at curbing hate speech until Elon Musk bought the site and fired some 4,400 contract workers—including the entire team that worked with community partners in Brazil.
Curzi and Kalemera both say that things have gotten worse since. Last year, Trump threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with “spend[ing] the rest of his life in prison” if Meta attempted to interfere with—i.e. fact-check claims about—the 2024 election. This January Meta announced that it was replacing its fact-checking program with X-style community notes, a move widely seen as capitulation to pressure from the new administration.
Shortly after Trump’s second inauguration, social platforms skipped a hearing on hate speech and disinformation held by the Brazilian attorney general. While this may have been expected of Musk’s X, it represented a big shift for Meta, Curzi told me. “Since Trump’s second administration, we cannot count on them [the platforms] to do even the bare minimum anymore,” she adds. Meta and X did not respond to requests for comment.
The US’s retreat is creating a moral vacuum
Then there’s simply the fact that the United States can no longer be counted on to support digital rights defenders or journalists under attack. That creates a vacuum, and it’s not clear who else is willing—or able—to step into it, participants said.
The US used to be the “main support for journalists in repressive regimes,” both financially and morally, one journalism trainer said during a last-minute session added to the schedule to address the funding crisis. The fact that there is now no one to turn to, she added, makes the current situation “not comparable to the past.”
But that’s not to say that everything was doom and gloom. “You could feel the solidarity and community,” says the EFF’s Cohn. “And having [the conference] in Taiwan, which lives in the shadow of a very powerful, often hostile government, seemed especially fitting.”
Indeed, if there was one theme that was repeated throughout the event, it was a shared desire to rethink and challenge who holds power.
Multiple sessions, for example, focused on strategies to counter both unresponsive Big Tech platforms and repressive governments. Meanwhile, during the session on AI and hate-speech moderation, participants concluded that one way of creating a safer internet would be for local organizations to build localized language models that are context- and language-specific. At the very least, said Curzi, we could move to other, smaller platforms that match our values, because at this point, “the big platforms can do anything they want.”
Do you have additional information on how Doge is affecting digital rights globally? Please use a non-work device and get in touch at tips@technologyreview.com or with the reporter on Signal: eileenguo.15.
According to a recent report by eMarketer, Facebook is experiencing a resurgence among Gen Z users, while TikTok is gaining traction with baby boomers.
Despite these shifts, both platforms maintain a stable core user base.
Facebook’s Gen Z Renaissance
Facebook’s seeing unexpected Gen Z growth despite overall decline. U.S. Gen Z users are projected to increase from 49.0% (33.9M) in 2024 to 56.9% (40.5M) by 2028.
Key drivers:
Utility: Event planning, niche groups, and Marketplace appeal to younger users.
Demo shift: ~36% of Gen Z are still under 18, many just entering the social media space.
E-commerce potential strong: 75.0% of Gen Z Facebook users (15-26) bought on Marketplace last year.
However, Gen Z still trails Gen X and millennials in user numbers and time spent on the platform. Interestingly, time on Facebook is decreasing for users under 55, suggesting a shift in how younger generations interact with the platform.
TikTok’s Boomer Boom
TikTok’s Gen Z market is saturated, but it’s seeing surprising growth among boomers.
Projections show a 10.5% increase in U.S. boomer users next year, from 8.7M to 9.7M.
This modest uptick underscores TikTok’s accessibility and its appeal to older adults who want to stay culturally relevant and connected with younger relatives.
While boomers are the fastest-growing demographic, TikTok adoption rates are rising steadily across all generations, indicating the platform’s broad appeal.
Shifting Social Media Landscape
Facebook use continues to decrease across all generations except Gen Z, highlighting the platform’s evolving role in the social media ecosystem.
This trend, coupled with TikTok’s growth among older users, suggests a blurring of generational lines in social media usage. Platforms that can adapt to changing user demographics while maintaining their core appeal will be best positioned for long-term success.
Implications For Marketers
Platforms and users are constantly changing. Brands must adapt or risk losing ground to competitors.
TikTok’s boomer growth opens up new avenues for brands targeting older demographics, but marketers should be mindful of the platform’s primarily young user base.
For Facebook marketers, the growing Gen Z user base presents new opportunities, especially in e-commerce via Marketplace. However, decreasing time spent on the platform means content needs to be more engaging and targeted.
Action items:
Audit strategy: Check content appeal across age groups and platforms.
Diversify: Create multi-faceted strategies for different demographics while maintaining brand identity.
Leverage analytics: Track engagement by age group and adjust tactics.
Test and optimize: Experiment with content formats and messaging for each platform.
Stay current: Follow platform updates and demographic trends.
Stay flexible and update strategies as user demographics and preferences change.
Brands that can reach across generations while respecting platform-specific norms will likely see the most success in this changing landscape.
Meta just released multiple updates to Meta AI which brings advanced image generation and editing capabilities directly to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp feeds, plus availability in more countries and languages.
New Meta AI Creative Tools
Meta AI is bringing AI generated and AI Edited photography that can be generated at the moment a user is making a post or sending a message with a new tool called Imagine Me.
Imagine Me is a prompt that can be used to transform an uploaded image that can be shared. This new feature is first rolling out as a beta in the United States.
Meta explains:
“Imagine yourself creates images based on a photo of you and a prompt like ‘Imagine me surfing’ or ‘Imagine me on a beach vacation’ using our new state-of-the-art personalization model. Simply type “Imagine me” in your Meta AI chat to get started, and then you can add a prompt like “Imagine me as royalty” or “Imagine me in a surrealist painting.” From there, you can share the images with friends and family, giving you the perfect response or funny sidebar to entertain your group chat.”
New Editing Features
Meta products like Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram now have advanced editing capabilities that allow users to add or remove objects from images, to change them in virtually any manner, such as their example of turning a cat in an image into a dog. A new Edit With AI button is forthcoming in a month that will unlock even more AI editing power.
Adding AI generated images to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp within feed, posts, stories, comments and messages is rolling out this week in English and coming later to other languages.
Meta AI In More Countries And Languages
Meta AI is now available in seven additional countries, bringing the total countries to to 22. It is also available in seven more languages.
List of Seven Additional Countries:
Argentina
Cameroon
Chile
Colombia
Ecuador
Mexico
Peru
Meta AI is now also available in the following seven additional languages:
French
German
Hindi
Hindi-Romanized Script
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
Advanced Math And Coding
Meta AI is making their most advanced model, Llama 405B, available for users to take advantage of its advanced reasoning abilities that can answer complex answers and excells at math and coding.
Meta AI writes:
“You can get help on your math homework with step-by-step explanations and feedback, write code faster with debugging support and optimization suggestions, and master complex technical and scientific concepts with expert instruction.”
Don’t believe what you may have heard; Facebook is still a dominant social media force in 2024.
With over 3 billion active users, it remains a key player for businesses, marketers, and social media enthusiasts.
And despite the rise of newer, shinier platforms, Facebook’s expansive reach and diverse user base are still unrivaled, making it a powerful channel for both personal and business engagement.
In this article, we’ll highlight the latest Facebook statistics and facts, providing a comprehensive overview of its reach, user behavior, and influence.
Facebook Overview
1. Facebook is the world’s most-used social platform in 2024, with over 3 billion global active users.
2. It is the third most-used app globally among mobile users, trailing only WhatsApp and YouTube.
3. Facebook ranks third in terms of time spent (behind TikTok and YouTube), with users spending an average of 19 hours and 47 minutes on Android app per month.
4. 64.1% of Facebook Android users open the app every day.
5. Facebook is the third most visited website in the US, with an estimated 2.90 billion monthly visits in April 2024.
6. Of its monthly US visitors, roughly 50.07% are mobile users, and 49.93% are using a desktop.
7. Globally, users spend an average of 3 minutes and 42 seconds on Facebook per app session.
8. Facebook is the second most searched query globally, with a search volume of 584.9 million.
9. Facebook is the fourth most downloaded social networking app in the US, behind Threads, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
30. Advertisers can reach 2.24 billion users on Facebook in 2024, representing 41.3% of all internet users and 27.7% of the total population.
31. Among active Facebook users, 53.8% say they use the platform to follow or research brands and products. This ranks the platform second behind Instagram (62.7%) and ahead of TikTok (47.4%).
32. Male users aged 25-34 years old make up the largest portion of Facebook’s advertising audience (18.4%), followed by those aged 18-24 years old (13.5%).
33. Ad impressions on Meta’s Family of Apps (FoA), which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, increased by 28% YoY in 2023.
Say what you will about Facebook, but its enduring relevance is undeniable.
With extensive reach, a broad user base, and significant advertising potential, Facebook will remain a cornerstone of any social media strategy in 2024.
By understanding these trends and user behaviors – and leveraging many of the insights covered above – you can maximize the potential of Facebook to drive engagement, awareness, and impact.
Whether or not you believe that Facebook is still the leader of the social media pack, there’s no arguing that it remains an incredibly powerful tool for businesses aiming to enhance their online presence.
However, creating a Facebook Page for your business is only the first step in your Facebook marketing journey.
The real power of the platform lies in nailing effective Facebook Page promotion so that you can reach users and generate awareness and trust for your business.
This article is tailored for those ready to elevate their Facebook Page’s visibility and effectiveness.
Whether you’re a startup just entering the world of social media or an established brand aiming to boost interaction, we’ll explore the essentials of promoting your Facebook Page to capitalize on the vast potential of the platform.
With its staggering 3.049 billion monthly active users, Facebook remains the world’s most widely used social media platform.
Yes, newer platforms are on the rise, but none offer the extensive reach that Facebook does – which is why it’s such a critical platform for businesses that want to connect with a vast and diverse audience.
Secondly, Facebook’s engagement has remained fairly robust.
The average Android user spends over 18 hours per month using the app, and according to SimilarWeb, Facebook.com is the third most visited website in the U.S.
This is nothing to sneeze at – and it signifies that businesses have ample opportunity to capture the attention of potential customers on the platform.
If you need more convincing, consider that 54.3% of Facebook users aged 16 to 64 report using the platform to follow or research brands and products. So, Facebook doesn’t just play a role in brand discovery but in the pre-purchase phase.
Now that we’ve convinced you that you should be on Facebook, let’s look at how to make the most of your Facebook Page.
Top 8 Ways To Promote Your Facebook Page
So, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been active on Facebook for a while, one thing is always true: getting your content in front of new audiences – and convincing those people to follow you – is key to leveraging Facebook effectively.
The good news is that there is more than one way to do that.
You could spend money on Facebook ads, which can work well, but there are also plenty of other easy, free ways to boost your Facebook following.
1. Give Your Page A Personal Touch
Creating a Facebook Page for your business is an excellent way to give your brand a more human feel.
While a “fan Page” is slightly different from the personal profiles assigned to individuals, it still allows people to follow your posts and engage with your content.
By creating a Page for your company, you’re putting a face to the name – and that’s powerful.
These days, the emphasis on authenticity and personal connection in social media is more critical than ever – yes, for brands, too. Users seek to interact with businesses that feel genuine and relatable, not just like corporate entities.
So remember that, while your Page serves professional purposes, the content should resonate on a personal level. Share stories that reflect your brand’s values, highlight customer experiences, or provide behind-the-scenes glimpses into your operations.
Consider this example from Patagonia, which leverages Facebook to showcase its commitment to environmental sustainability and the values that drive the brand.
In this post below, the company highlights a partner and community organizer who is working to make strides in sustainability.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
Here, Patagonia isn’t just selling a product; it’s sharing values and stories, engaging millions of people worldwide.
When promoting your products or services, try to frame them in a way that addresses your audience’s needs or interests.
Explain the value and relevance to your followers, and encourage them to see your offerings as solutions to their problems or ways to enhance their lives.
2. Use High-Quality Visual Content
The power of visual storytelling continues to dominate social media – after all, who doesn’t love visuals that are easy on the eyes?
And in a world where even common modern smartphones can capture beautiful imagery – and there is a proliferation of simple editing tools and apps available to us – users don’t just prefer high-quality photos and videos; they expect them.
Your Facebook Page should reflect this shift towards visual excellence if you want to captivate your audience effectively.
Facebook has preferred dimensions for its images, which we’ll go over below, but beware that it will compress photos to their desired size.
This can stretch images, so to achieve the best results, start with the best possible quality and maintain control over the final presentation.
Prioritize crisp, clear, and engaging visuals that embody your brand’s essence and messaging. For uploading, PNG and JPEG formats are typically the best formats.
Focus on two main visual elements:
Your Profile: This encompasses your profile picture and cover photo. For the best Facebook cover photo quality, set the size to 851 pixels by 315 pixels. For your profile photo, make the size 196 by 196 pixels.
Your Posts: The content you share significantly impacts your brand’s perception. For post images, we recommend you aim for 1200 pixels by 630 pixels to ensure your visuals appear perfectly on both mobile and desktop feeds. You can also experiment with other dimensions, such as 1080 pixels by 1080 pixels (square), or 1080 pixels x 1350 pixels (portrait). For Facebook Stories, the recommended image size is 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels – a vertical format, just like Instagram Stories.
Using high-quality visuals not only enhances your Facebook Page’s aesthetic, but also significantly increases the likelihood of engagement and follower growth.
However, substance is as critical as style. Pair your visuals with valuable content tailored to your audience’s interests and needs.
GoPro is an example of a brand that uses beautiful, high-quality visual content on Facebook to engage its followers. See this example below, which, impressively, leverages user-generated content.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
3. Enable The “Call To Action” Button
As a business, you want your Facebook Page to enhance awareness of your brand and drive followers – but ultimately, you also want to turn those followers into active consumers.
You can do so by utilizing the call-to-action (CTA) button on your Facebook Page.
By adding a CTA button to your Page, you can direct your audience to where they should go next, including key business goals like shopping, booking appointments, or contacting your company.
Select a CTA that aligns with your primary objectives and consider integrating them with Facebook’s features, such as Groups or Messenger, to keep interactions within the platform.
For example, National Geographic uses its CTA to encourage users to sign up for a subscription to the magazine.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
4. Join Or Create A Facebook Group
As we just discussed, creating and joining Facebook Groups is a phenomenal way to interact with others, let people come to you, and increase visibility and authority for your brand.
To get started, identify groups that align with your business’s industry, values, or target market. Search for fitting keywords on Facebook and discover some groups to join.
After that, make sure to engage by leaving comments and reactions to posts. By participating actively and making valuable contributions to the Group, you can foster recognition and trust within these communities.
It’s worth noting that only some Groups allow businesses to join. For Groups that only allow individuals, you must join from your personal Facebook account and promote your brand and Page via comments.
Alternatively, you can create your own Facebook Group. This has become an increasingly popular trend among brands, as it allows you to nurture your own community of like-minded people and start conversations.
When creating a Facebook Group, be sure to provide value first. Rather than building a Group around your brand, build a community around something related to your brand – and structure it as a resource hub where members can find support and tips and network with others.
This way, you’re putting genuine support, engagement, and community-building before sales efforts.
A great example of this is Canva’s Canva Design Community Facebook Group. This official Group from Canva is a place for users to discuss not only the product and get tips and insights, but also anything design-related.
By keeping the Group broad and welcoming all kinds of design-focused discussions, Canva has built a community of over 394,000 members.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
5. Expand Your Facebook Page’s Reach
Let’s revisit your current network: a.k.a., the people you already know.
Leveraging your existing network is a fundamental strategy for promoting your Facebook Page.
Whether it’s your friends, peers, or followers across other different social platforms, it’s time to utilize them. These people are already connected to your business and are often willing to support your endeavors.
So, what should you do? Promote, promote, promote.
Start by integrating your Facebook Page promotion across all of your communication channels. Post it to your Instagram and put it in your Instagram bio.
Share updates with personal contacts, embed a link to it on your website, and include its link in your email signature.
If you’ve created any Facebook Groups, make sure you’re directing members back to your main Page for additional content.
Wherever you can, make sure the road leads back to you and your Facebook Page. This will help enhance your visibility and follower count.
In this example, you can see how the Australian meal delivery brand The Dinner Ladies includes a link directly to its Facebook Page in its email newsletter.
Screenshot from Gmail, March 2024
6. Use Facebook Stories And Facebook Live
Both Facebook Stories and Facebook Live can help you establish a sincere connection with your audience.
The cousin of Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories are ideal for sharing short, engaging snippets of your day or quick business updates. This allows for a more casual interaction with your followers.
These fleeting posts can be a mix of personal insights, time-sensitive promotions, or behind-the-scenes looks at your brand.
Facebook Live, on the other hand, offers an intimate, real-time connection that makes viewers feel as though they’re right there with you and part of the moment.
Try leveraging Live to broadcast important events, share updates, or host Q&A sessions. This direct engagement creates a sense of transparency and community between your company and your audience.
The Wall Street Journal is one example of a brand that utilizes Facebook Stories to offer quick updates to its followers. It posts snapshots of the stories of the day, encouraging readers to learn more.
Screenshot from Facebook, March 2024
7. Maintain A Regular Schedule: Consistency Is The Secret Sauce
The key to success in any endeavor – whether it’s becoming debt-free, building meaningful relationships, or improving your personal fitness – lies in consistency.
This is true on Facebook, too.
Something essential to remember if you want to gain and retain followers is to make sure you stick to a regular schedule.
Not only will this keep your brand fresh in the minds of your audience – but an active and up-to-date Page signals to new visitors that they can expect regular, valuable content, encouraging them to follow.
Try to post about one to two times a day, or at least a few times per week, to maintain a steady stream of content without overwhelming your followers.
If you’re too busy to stick to a tight posting schedule, which you very well might be, there’s no reason to fear.
There are many ways to automate posts to your Facebook Page, from plugins on WordPress to software made specifically for the task.
8. Engage Your Audience And Peers
Doesn’t getting all those reactions and comments on your content feel good? You’re not the only one who feels that way; nearly everybody does – including your audience.
Active participation on Facebook, beyond just updating your own Page, can significantly enhance your visibility and credibility. Make an effort to connect with individuals and other businesses that align with your brand’s values and interests.
Do not be self-promotional; instead, post real, thoughtful comments. People appreciate authenticity and are more likely to check out your Page to see what you’re all about.
Don’t be afraid to message peers or influencers within your industry, too. Most, if not all, have been in your shoes before and might be open to connecting and sharing insights with others just getting started – especially those who show genuine interest and respect for their work.
Try finding a successful account you admire and send them a quick message. You never know what could happen if you hear back.
It Is Still Possible To Increase Your Facebook Page’s Following
Time to stop worrying about promoting your Page on Facebook.
Deliver consistent, high-quality content, interact with others, and use the existing Facebook tools at your disposal, and you’ll go far.
With a new set of tools under your belt, it’s time to step out into the not-so-scary world of Facebook and run a Page.
Keep at it, and soon, you’ll start to see the results you’ve been craving!
Meta’s AI assistant, powered by the new Llama 3 model, will now incorporate real-time search results from Google and Bing.
This integration marks a step forward in AI assistant capabilities and their potential impact on the search industry.
You can access Meta AI within Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the newly launched Meta.ai desktop experience.
Google & Bing Search + Meta
Meta is integrating Google and Bing results directly into its AI assistant.
Instead of relying solely on training data or a single search engine, Meta’s AI assistant intelligently selects and displays results from either Google or Bing, depending on the query.
This provides users with a more comprehensive and diverse range of information.
Based on my limited testing before writing this piece, I could only get Meta AI to search using Bing. I’m uncertain about the criteria or conditions that would cause it to use Bing versus Google for web searches.
Here’s an example showing that it’s capable of providing up-to-date information:
Seamless Search Across Apps
Meta’s new search experience allows you to access relevant information without switching platforms.
For example, while planning a trip in a Messenger group chat, you can ask the assistant to find flights and determine the least crowded weekends to travel.
Screenshot from: about.fb.com/news/, April 2024.
Meta is taking a multi-pronged approach to make its AI assistant a consistent presence across its family of apps:
Integration into the search boxes of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger
Appearing directly in the Facebook main feed to respond to posts
A new meta.ai website where users can log in to have continued conversations
Real-time text-to-image generation with an “Imagine” feature in WhatsApp
Future integration with Meta’s VR headsets and smart glasses
More information about these initiatives is available in Meta’s announcement.
Implications For Search Engine Optimization
Integrating Google and Bing search results into Meta’s AI assistant has potential consequences for SEO.
As AI chatbots become increasingly popular for finding information, visibility in the integrated search results will become more valuable for publishers.
SEO strategies may need to evolve to accommodate traditional search engines and AI assistants.
This could involve a greater focus on satisfying conversational queries that mirror how users interact with chatbots.
A Shifting Landscape
Meta’s move to integrate search results from Google and Bing into its AI assistant highlights the evolving nature of the search industry.
As the lines between traditional search and conversational AI continue to blur, companies are vying for dominance.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has expressed ambitious plans for the AI assistant, aiming to make it the most intelligent and widely accessible AI tool available.
With the release of the powerful Llama 3 model and incorporating search results from leading search engines, Meta is positioning itself as a top contender in the AI chatbot market.
FAQ
How is Meta’s AI Assistant changing how we interact with search engines?
Meta’s AI assistant is transforming the search engine experience by integrating Google and Bing search results, simplifying access to information across multiple platforms.
Users can search directly through Meta’s AI assistant within Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. This integration enables real-time information retrieval and a conversational interface that aligns with how users increasingly prefer to find and interact with content online.
By catering to conversational queries and reducing the need to switch platforms, Meta’s AI assistant may shift the focus of SEO strategies toward satisfying these user interactions.
What new features does Meta’s AI Assistant offer?
Meta’s AI Assistant provides various unique features to create a seamless search experience alongside live search results from Google and Bing.
These features include:
Integration into the search functions within Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
The ability to interact with posts directly on the Facebook feed.
Access to the meta.ai desktop experience for continued conversations.
Real-time text-to-image generation through the “Imagine” feature in WhatsApp.
Planned future integration with Meta’s virtual reality headsets and smart glasses.
Featured Image: Screenshot from about.fb.com/news/, April 2024
Meta announced an update to its AI labeling policy, expanding its definition of “manipulated media” to go beyond AI-generated videos, to now include deceptive audio and images on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
An important feature of the new policy is it’s sensitivity on being perceived as being restrictive of freedom of expression. Rather than adopt the approach of removing problematic content Meta is instead simply labeling it. Meta introduced two labels, “Made with AI” and “Imagined with AI,” to make clear what content was created or altered with AI.
New Warning Labels
The AI-generated content will rely on identifying the signals of AI-authorship and self-reporting:
“Our ‘Made with AI’ labels on AI-generated video, audio, and images will be based on our detection of industry-shared signals of AI images or people self-disclosing that they’re uploading AI-generated content”
Content that is significantly misleading may receive more prominent labels so that users can get a better understanding.
Harmful content that violates the Community Standards, such as content that incites violence, election interference, bullying or harassments will qualify for removal, regardless if it is human or AI generated.
Reason For Meta’s Updated Policy
The original AI labeling policy was created in 2020 and because of the state of the technology it was narrowly defined confined to addressing deceptive videos (the kind that depicted public figures saying things they never did). Meta’s Oversight Board recognized that technology has progressed to the point that a new policy was needed. The new policy accordingly expands to now address AI-generated audio and images, in addition to videos.
Based On User Feedback
Meta’s process for updating their rules appear to have anticipated pushback from all sides. Their new policy is based on extensive feedback from from a wide range of stakeholder and input from the general public. The new policy also has the flexibility to bend if needed.
Meta explains:
“In Spring 2023, we began reevaluating our policies to see if we needed a new approach to keep pace with rapid advances… We completed consultations with over 120 stakeholders in 34 countries in every major region of the world. Overall, we heard broad support for labeling AI-generated content and strong support for a more prominent label in high-risk scenarios. Many stakeholders were receptive to the concept of people self-disclosing content as AI-generated.
…We also conducted public opinion research with more than 23,000 respondents in 13 countries and asked people how social media companies, such as Meta, should approach AI-generated content on their platforms. A large majority (82%) favor warning labels for AI-generated content that depicts people saying things they did not say.
…And the Oversight Board noted their recommendations were informed by consultations with civil-society organizations, academics, inter-governmental organizations and other experts.”
Collaboration And Consensus
Meta’s announcement explains that they plan for the policies to keep up with the pace of technology by revisiting it with organizations like the Partnership on AI, governments and non-governmental organizations.
Meta’s revised policy emphasizes the need for transparency and context for AI-generated content, that removal of content will be based on violations of their community standards and that the preferred response will be to label potentially problematic content.
Screenshot from: creators.facebook.com/blog/combating-unoriginal-content, July 2025.
