Yesterday I was happily scheduling some content on my Facebook business page, added a link to one of my posts and Facebook basically went, “Nope, you’ve had your two.” 😂 Up popped a message telling me that I had used all of my posts with links for the month and that, on my Page, I can currently add links to TWO organic posts per month. If I want to add links to more posts, Meta would quite like me to upgrade to Meta One and pay for the privilege.
Now, I’d already seen variations of this message floating around Facebook groups over the last couple of weeks, usually accompanied by lots of people being understandably annoyed about it, but this was the first time it had actually appeared on my own Page. And yes, it IS annoying. Would I rather carry on putting as many links as I like into my Facebook posts for free? Of course I bloody would. But Facebook is a business, and we have been using somebody else’s business to market our own businesses for free for YEARS, so whilst we are absolutely allowed to be irritated when they change the rules, spending the next week complaining about it isn’t actually going to help us sell anything.
So instead of asking, “How dare Facebook do this?”, I started asking a much more useful question. If somebody sees one of my Facebook posts, is interested in what I’m talking about, but I can’t give them a clickable link in that post, have I made it ridiculously easy for them to find what they need anyway? Because Facebook might have changed one of the routes into my business, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit there staring at the roadblock. I can build another route.
Before I get into what I’ve done, I do want to make something really clear because I’m not going to declare that every Facebook business Page in the world has suddenly been universally restricted to two links a month when that isn’t what I know. What I know is that MY Facebook business Page is currently telling me that I can add links to two organic posts per month, I’ve used both of them and I can either wait until my allowance resets or look at Meta One if I want more. I’ve also seen other business owners sharing similar messages, but Meta has a habit of rolling things out differently across different accounts, so your Page might not be showing exactly the same thing as mine.
But actually, whether you have this restriction today isn’t really the most important part of this, because Facebook could change it again next month. Instagram could change something tomorrow. TikTok could change something next week. Any of the platforms we use to market our businesses can change the rules because ultimately we don’t own any of them, which is why I became far more interested in looking at the structure I had built around Facebook than I was in getting angry at Facebook itself.
I’ve also recorded a full walkthrough showing you exactly what Facebook showed me, how I’ve optimised my own Facebook Page and the ManyChat workaround I’m now using. You can watch that below, or keep reading for the full breakdown.
The first thing I did was look at my Facebook Page properly
And I mean PROPERLY, because I realised I’d fallen into the trap I think quite a lot of us fall into with our business Pages. We set them up, fill in some information, add our website, choose a category, chuck a cover image on there and then largely forget about them while we concentrate on creating the actual content. But if I’m potentially going to be writing more posts that say, “Click my name and you’ll find the information on my Page,” then my Page needs to actually do some bloody work when they get there.
Someone could see one post from me, click my name and arrive on my Page knowing almost nothing about who I am or what I do, so within a few seconds I want them to be able to understand who I help, what I help them with and what they should do next. That meant looking at my cover image, my intro, the About section, my services, reviews, links, contact information and all of the other bits Facebook gives us the option to use, and deciding whether each of those things was actually helping somebody move through my business or whether it was just there because Facebook gave me a box to fill in.
And that last bit is important, because optimising your Facebook Page does NOT mean getting every available section to 100%. Nobody considering working with me needs to know where I went to school, every job I’ve had since I was 16, what football team I support or that my music taste apparently consists of Bon Jovi, Take That, Adele and Elton John. 😂 If something helps somebody understand what I do, trust me, decide whether I can help them or take their next step, brilliant, it earns its place. If it doesn’t, I don’t need to add it just because Facebook has helpfully provided somewhere for me to type it.
And then I got to my pinned post…
This is where the whole thing got particularly funny because I wanted my pinned post to be really simple. I didn’t want another enormous “Hi, I’m Shelly and here are 27 things you should know about me” post because my cover image, intro and About section are already doing that job. I wanted somebody arriving on my Page to be able to look at one post, decide what they needed right now and take the appropriate next step.
So I gave them three options. If they want to find out where their business could be leaking revenue, I have my Revenue Leak Calculator. If they want to understand how a funnel actually works by experiencing one themselves, I have Show Me The Funnel. And if they’re already at the point where they want my help with their business, I have my Work With Me page. Lovely. Three options, three links, job done.
Except Facebook said no. 😂
I’d already used my links for the month, which is where I think there’s a really important difference between understanding the strategy behind what you’re doing and blindly following a tactic. The tactic was to put three links in my pinned post, but I wasn’t actually emotionally invested in having three URLs sitting in a Facebook post. What I wanted was for somebody to be able to choose what they needed and easily get to the right place. THAT was the objective, and once I remembered the objective, the fact that Facebook had removed one particular way of achieving it suddenly wasn’t such a big problem.
Enter ManyChat
Instead of putting the links directly into the pinned post, I now ask people to comment a word. If they want my Revenue Leak Calculator they comment CALCULATOR, if they want Show Me The Funnel they comment FUNNEL, and if they want to see how they can work with me they comment WORK. ManyChat can then pick up that comment and start the conversation with them in Messenger, which means I can still get them to the appropriate next step without needing to put the external link into the Facebook post itself.
So instead of the journey being Facebook post → external link → next step, it becomes Facebook post → comment → Messenger → next step. I haven’t abandoned the destination just because Facebook blocked one particular route to it, I’ve simply found another road. And actually, I’m now encouraging interaction with the post and starting a conversation in Messenger at the same time, so this isn’t necessarily a worse route just because it wasn’t the route I originally intended to use.
And this is the bit I really want small business owners to know, because I can already hear the collective groan of, “Oh brilliant, Facebook has changed something so now I have to pay for ANOTHER piece of tech.” You can actually start doing this with ManyChat for free, so you don’t necessarily need to start paying for another monthly subscription just to create a basic Facebook comment automation.
Of course, this is where the online business world has a tendency to say, “Great, just set up a ManyChat automation,” and move swiftly on as though those seven words have magically given you the ability to know what the bloody hell you’re supposed to do next. 😂 And this is one of my biggest bugbears with business advice generally, because we are surrounded by people telling us WHAT we should be doing, then wondering why business owners are overwhelmed when nobody has actually shown them HOW to do any of it.
Which is exactly why I created ManyChat Magic. I’m not going to tell you that ManyChat is the workaround and then leave you staring at another piece of technology for the next six hours trying to work out which button you’re supposed to press. ManyChat Magic walks you through how to actually set this stuff up, including the Facebook comment automations I’m talking about here, so you can understand how it works and then actually use it in your own business.
And because Facebook has just made knowing how to do this considerably more useful, I’ve created the code FACEBOOK, which means you can currently get access to the whole of ManyChat Magic for just £10.
Use the code FACEBOOK at checkout.
But the bigger lesson here isn’t actually ManyChat
ManyChat is a solution to the particular problem sitting in front of me today, but there will be another Facebook change at some point because there always is. Facebook can change its features, algorithm, pricing and what it allows us to do for free. Instagram can do the same. So can TikTok, YouTube and every other platform we use, and I think somewhere along the way we have started confusing having access to these platforms with actually owning the space we’ve built on them.
That doesn’t mean I’m about to dramatically announce that I’m leaving social media because we’re all “building on borrowed land.” Quite the opposite. I’m going to carry on using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and I’m going to continue taking advantage of everything these platforms allow me to do for free because why the hell wouldn’t I? They give us access to audiences that businesses would once have paid an absolute fortune to reach, and I have no intention of throwing that away because Facebook has annoyed me this week.
What I DO want is for social media to be one of the roads into my business rather than social media being my business, because there’s a huge difference between those two things. If my entire customer journey depends on Facebook continuing to allow me to do one particular thing forever, then Facebook changing that one thing becomes a major business problem. If I understand the journey I’m trying to create and I’ve built different routes through it, Facebook changing one feature becomes something I need to adapt to rather than something that brings the whole thing crashing down.
That, for me, is the much bigger lesson in all of this. Use the platforms, take advantage of them, build audiences on them and use everything they give us, but stop confusing access with ownership and make sure you understand the structure you’re building underneath all of it.
Facebook changed the route, so I built another one.
Structure First. Growth Follows.
Shelly Shulman 