Facebook changes silently affecting your business

For a number of people in adult, Facebook is still a powerful tool in our wheelhouse.

Are you one of the adult companies that post on Facebook? For a number of people in adult, Facebook is still a powerful tool in our wheelhouse. Facebook has quietly made a big change that could dramatically affect your posts. They are getting rid of the ability to change the image in a link preview. This announcement was made in the their developers board in June and started rolling out at the end of July and will be completed mid September.

7 Veils Media is the premier social marketing firm in the adult industry. We work with many different companies and often post content on Facebook pages and in groups. The ability to modify metadata has been integral to allowing us to do this. This change has the ability to dramatically affect everyone’s ability to post content for adult companies.

Why Stop Modifying Link Previews?

Though Mark Zuckerberg denied that fake news affected the outcome of the election, Facebook has clearly decided that fake news is a problem on the site. Removing the ability to modify link metadata, this includes headline, description, and image is a step to help eliminate fake news. The metadata modify feature was being used as a way for people to create link content that was not representational of the actual link. Facebook is changing this feature with the goal of “limiting malicious misrepresentations of underlying link content”.

How This Affects You?

Many people in the adult industry simply stay away from Facebook. It has not been a friendly platform for our industry and is often just an exercise in frustration as our pages get shut down. That being said, it is the largest social network and everyone is always asking if they should be on Facebook, what they can get from it if they are, and what can they post?

Blogs have been the safest content for adult companies to post on Facebook. Many companies have created SFW blogs in order to be able to post on Facebook. The blog is a great option, however if the preview metadata is not SFW then you risk getting your content flagged by the Facebook censors.

What Are Your Options?

1. Link Ownership

If your page is categorized as a media publisher you will have the option to claim “Link Ownership” until September 12. If you claim link ownership you will be able to edit your metadata. Go to your publishing tools, and select “link ownership” from the left hand menu. From there Facebook will give you some code to add to your website to verify your site. The ability to edit your metadata through link ownership is not necessarily permanent. Facebook is actively testing and may remove this feature as well.

2. Edit Metadata

The easiest option is to <a href:” https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters”>edit your metadata</a>. When you are writing your posts, make sure that your information is set up they way you want it to appear. You can test your content before sharing it by using the Facebook Sharing Debugger

If you use wordpress you can easily edit your metadata with a plugin such as Yoast, as well as by editing your theme code. For more information read this great blog about editing the open graph metadata on your wordpress site.

If you like to have your content shared on Facebook, either by your own page or by other people, you need to make sure that it is set up for safe Facebook sharing. Most people have already lost the ability to edit their metadata but the final roll out of this change will be done by September 12.

If you have any questions about how to prepare your content for Facebook or to discuss any aspect of your social marketing, please contact Lauren at lauren@7veils.com.

Lauren McEwen in association with thespotlive.com

Published on August 31, 2017.
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