Meta Advises Page Managers To Include Links in Post Comments

Do we now have official confirmation from Facebook itself that you shouldn’t include links in your post, and that you should, in fact, be adding them in the first comment instead?

Well, kind of.

Over the weekend, several users noted this recommendation in their post-specific insights in the Professional Dashboard for their Facebook Pages:

This one was shared by @cmcalgary on Threads, but several other users posted the same, highlighting it as official, confirmed advice from Facebook that you should be adding your links in the first comment, as opposed to including the URL in your post body.

So I checked this out on SMT’s posts, which all include a link (as we’re using this to get people to read out full posts, not engage on Facebook as such). And sure enough, this advice is there, though with one key difference:

As you can see, in the advice here it notes that this post, which does include a link, doesn’t actually display a link.

That’s because I delete the actual URL. Once the post is composed, I attach the URL, let FB generate the preview, then delete the URL text from the post. So, technically, there’s no link in the caption, but there is a link still attached to the post.

Does that impact performance in the same way? Well, I guess it doesn’t include a photo, as it’s only got the preview image pulled in from the link. Maybe that means that you should be including all of your post links in the first comment, and an image in the main post, which is what many high-performing publishers on Facebook are currently doing.

It does seem like that may be a better way to go.

Which makes sense. According to Meta’s latest “Widely Viewed Content Report,” currently, 97.3% of all post views on Facebook (in the U.S.) go to updates that don’t include a link to a source outside of that app.

The actual exposure for link posts has been declining over time (though it saw a slight increase in the last report), which suggests that Meta’s algorithm is looking to drive users away from link posts, with video content being the main beneficiary of that switch.

Meta has seemingly had a change of heart on this front of late, as part of its broader re-alignment towards “free expression,” and it is also worth noting that the Threads team says that it’s been working to improve the reach of links in the app, with a view to encouraging more publishers and creators to post to the app.

So maybe, Meta is changing focus a little bit. But the stats show that it is only a little, while Meta’s official advice is that link posts don’t do as well.

So maybe you can get around this by deleting the URL from the post text, or maybe it’s worth experimenting with including the post link in the first comment. Which is more work for social media managers, as you can’t schedule the first comment. But it could be worth experimenting with.

I’ve asked Meta for further confirmation on this element, and the specifics of what sees better (or worse) performance, and will update this post if/when I hear back.