Facebook has grown to occupy a big part of our online lives, as more and more people tend to interact and share their moments to others with this social networking platform. Even for us airsofters, Facebook, even for its recent banning of airsoft gun sales, we still cling to Facebook to get in touch with other airsofters, to the detriment of other online airsoft forums which in the past have been the primary tool for interactions of members of the airsoft communities worldwide.

A good number of airsofters or airsoft media companies who want to build a following have invested1 100% on a Facebook presence rather than drive traffic to their own websites or blogs.

For Popular Airsoft, having a Facebook presence is important, but not essential for its growth as visits from Social Media is 15% of its traffic whilst 80% is from search (100% organic keywords) and direct visits according to OptimusPrime.

But then, Facebook is also a minefield that we need to carefully tread. Just one mistake can be amplified quickly; others abuse it by buying likes just to increase their fan base; and what we really do dread, the proliferation of “Clickbaits” or the use of eye-catching headlines or titles just to make users to “like” or “share” a story or post. Many are exaggerated ones and some even go to fraudulent activities such as fake “giveaways” or “raffles” just to amass a good number of likes that can then be monetized or to collect personal information that there is a backlash against these nowadays. Even airsoft is not immune to this as we see the usual tricks in Clickbaiting also used by airsofters on YouTube and Facebook.

“Top 10 (or insert no. here)” lists are a mild form of clickbaits. Digg has a story of the top Clickbait headline phrases so you can find the most used ones though it is not a complete list.

Now for those who always resort to clickbaiting to get more likes, they better watch out as Facebook will start to crackdown on “engagement baits” which it calls clickbaits on it social network:

People have told us that they dislike spammy posts on Facebook that goad them into interacting with likes, shares, comments, and other actions. For example, “LIKE this if you’re an Aries!” This tactic, known as “engagement bait,” seeks to take advantage of our News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement in order to get greater reach. So, starting this week, we will begin demoting individual posts from people and Pages that use engagement bait.

With that said, it means that posts using the “engagement bait” tactics will be seen less and less in the news feed of users. Over the following weeks, they will roll out page demotion over the weeks to allow publishers to adapt to the new rules and at the same time work on avoiding the use of “engagement baits”.
And how will this impact publishers and businesses? Here is what Facebook says:

Publishers and other businesses that use engagement bait tactics in their posts should expect their reach on these posts to decrease. Meanwhile, Pages that repeatedly share engagement bait posts will see more significant drops in reach. Page Admins should continue to focus on posting relevant and meaningful stories that do not use engagement bait tactics. Learn more about engagement bait and how to avoid using it here.

Hopefully that this roll out will be without mishaps as even those who do not resort to “engagement baits” or innocently used a phrase or title that is in the list of whatever algorithm that Facebook will use will get caught in dragnet.

Will this minimize the Clickbaits on Facebook? We sure hope so and once this will roll out it will be a bloodbath as many users who resort to Clickbaits will see their reach and engagement go down if it is rolled out properly.