8 November 2026

The Facebook guide: how it works in 2026 and what to post

The Facebook guide header: key Facebook specs at a glance, November 2026

Facebook gets written off every year, usually by people who don’t use it. Meanwhile Ofcom’s latest figures have Facebook and Messenger used by 93% of UK adults who are online. Your customers are on it. So are their mums, their neighbours and the local community group where someone is asking, right now, whether anyone can recommend a business like yours.

It has changed a lot, though. Since 2025 every video is a Reel, Facebook has started rationing link posts, and it has got serious about punishing accounts that repost other people’s stuff. This guide covers how it works in November 2026 and what we’d do if we were starting a business presence on it today.

Facebook at a glance

Who’s there: almost everyone, with a slightly older lean than Instagram or TikTok. A quarter of the UK ad audience is 55 or over.
What it’s good for: local reach, community, word of mouth, Groups, and video that gets shared to friends.
The one thing to know: original content is what gets recommended now. Reposts and memes from other accounts lose reach.
Best formats: Reels (all video is a Reel now), photo albums, and short text posts that start a conversation.
Links: use sparingly. Link posts get the lowest engagement and some accounts are now limited in how many they can post.
How often: consistency matters more than volume. A few good posts a week, every week.

Page, profile or professional mode?

This trips people up, so it’s worth getting straight.

A Page is a separate presence for your business. It gets admin roles (so more than one person can manage it), Meta Business Suite, scheduling, full insights and the ability to advertise. If you’re a business, you want a Page.
Professional mode turns your personal profile into a creator-style profile with followers, insights and Reels tools, while keeping your friends. It’s a good fit if you are the brand, but it doesn’t give you the team features of a Page.
A plain personal profile is for friends and family. Using it to sell is against Facebook’s terms and annoys your friends.

Since November 2025, setting up a new Page is one flow where you choose “Business” or “Creator”.

We run a Page for Built Not Boosted and post to our personal profiles too, but those we always post by hand. Personal posts written for friends need to sound like you talking to friends, and no scheduler does that.

Set your Page up properly

Name: your business name. Up to 75 characters, but shorter is better.
Profile picture: 320 x 320 pixels, shown as a circle. A logo works here, or your face if you’re the business.
Cover image: 851 x 315 pixels on desktop, but mobile crops it differently, so keep anything important in the middle.
Categories: pick up to three. The first one shows under your name, so make it the most accurate.
Description: a sentence or two on what you do and who for. Use the words people would search for.
Contact details and website: fill everything in. People use Facebook as a directory.
Add your admins. Never have a business Page with only one admin. If that person loses their account, you lose the Page.

How the feed decides what people see (2026)

Meta says the feed aims to show people posts from “people, interests and ideas” they find valuable. Behind that, it predicts how likely someone is to interact with your post, based on things like their past interactions with you, how long they spend on similar content, comments (including how long they are), and shares.

Four changes matter most right now.

1. Originality is the big one

From July 2025, Facebook started cutting the reach of accounts that repeatedly repost other people’s content. In March 2026 it spelled out what counts: original content is something you filmed or produced yourself. Adding a border, a caption, speeding it up or stitching it into a “watch-along” doesn’t make someone else’s video yours. Only original content is eligible to be recommended to people who don’t already follow you.

For small businesses that’s good news. You’re up against fewer meme pages.

2. All video is a Reel

Since June 2025 there’s no separate “video”. Everything you upload is a Reel, short or long, vertical or landscape. Shorter Reels (under 90 seconds) can still appear in more places, and Facebook said in late 2025 it was showing far more same-day Reels from creators. Video is the main way to reach people who don’t follow you yet.

3. Links are being rationed

Meta reported that 98.7% of post views in the US in early 2026 were on posts without an outside link. It has also been testing a limit of two link posts a month for Pages and professional profiles unless you pay for its subscription products, and widened that test in September 2026. Links in the comments currently don’t count towards the limit. It isn’t clear yet whether every UK account is included.

Our approach: treat link posts as a budget. We spend ours on the pieces that most deserve a click, and point people to “the link on our Page” the rest of the time.

4. People can tell the feed what they want

Since October 2026, users can type the topics they want more or less of. You can’t see those requests, but it rewards Pages that are clearly about something. A Page that posts about everything is harder to match to anyone.

What to post

Formats and sizes

Text posts: up to 63,206 characters, though only the first couple of lines show on mobile. Short status posts with a real question still do well; in Socialinsider’s 2026 study text posts had the highest average engagement of any format.
Photos: 1080 x 1350 portrait or 1080 x 1080 square. Portrait takes up more of the phone screen.
Albums: several photos in one post. They got the most views per post in the same study.
Reels: vertical 9:16 at 1080 x 1920 is the standard. Keep text away from the top and bottom, where Facebook puts its buttons.
Stories: 1080 x 1920, gone after 24 hours. Good for behind-the-scenes and staying in front of people who already follow you.
Live: your account needs to be at least 60 days old with 100 followers.
Groups: not a format, but often the best place on Facebook for a local business. More on these below.

What works

Your own video. Film it yourself, even on a phone. Facebook is actively looking for it.
Local and community posts. Events, people you’ve worked with, things happening near you.
Questions people want to answer. Ask about their experience, not about your product.
Real behind-the-scenes. The van that broke down, the new starter, the job that went wrong and how you fixed it.
Photo albums from something you did. A networking event, a project from start to finish.

On our own accounts the same rule holds that we see everywhere: honest personal and community posts earn far more engagement than anything that sounds like an advert.

Groups

Groups are where Facebook still feels like a community. Local business groups, town groups, industry groups.

The rule is to take part, not advertise. Answer questions properly. Share useful things. Recommend other people. When someone asks for a business like yours, the people you’ve helped will often tag you before you’ve seen the post.

You can also run your own Group around a topic your customers care about. It’s more work than a Page but builds a much closer audience. Since November 2025, admins can switch a private group to public.

A simple weekly rhythm

Two or three Reels a week, original, with captions burned in.
One or two photo or text posts that start a conversation.
One or two Stories a few times a week if you have something casual to show.
Ten minutes a day in Groups, helping rather than selling.
Reply to every comment and message, ideally the same day.

Buffer found that accounts that post consistently get around five times more engagement per post than those that post in bursts. That matches what we’ve seen.

On timing, Sprout Social’s data points to Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, with weekends weakest, but their numbers are blended across several platforms. On our own accounts weekday early evening has done best. Check your Page’s insights for when your followers are actually online.

Measuring it

Use the Professional Dashboard or Meta Business Suite. Two things to know first: “Views” replaced “Impressions” as the main number, and watch time is now “Minutes viewed”. So don’t compare this year’s figures with old reports like for like.

What we watch:

Shares. The strongest signal Facebook has that a post is worth showing to more people. Private shares (to Messenger or WhatsApp) count most.
Views from non-followers. Tells you whether Facebook is recommending you.
Reels watch time and retention. Where do people drop off?
Comments and messages. Conversations, not just reactions.
Follower growth. Slow and steady is fine.

It’s also worth checking the Support section in your Page menu now and then. It’s where Facebook tells you if any of your content has been limited from recommendations.

Where AI helps

Turning one video into several posts. Give an AI the transcript and ask for three caption options and a question to end on.
Writing for your audience, not at them. Ask it to rewrite a caption the way you’d say it to a customer in your shop. Then fix it so it sounds like you.
Answering the common questions. Draft replies to the questions you get every week, then personalise them as you use them.
Reading your insights. Export the data and ask which posts drove shares and messages, not just views.

Don’t use AI to pump out generic posts or to make “original” content out of someone else’s video. That’s exactly what Facebook is now filtering out. If you want AI drafts that sound like you rather than like everyone else, start with how we make AI sound like a person.

Mistakes to avoid

Reposting memes and other people’s videos. They now cost you reach.
Putting a link in every post.
Running your business from your personal profile.
A Page with one admin.
Leaving the TikTok watermark on a video you’ve reposted.
Treating Groups as a free advert board.
Comparing new “Views” numbers with old “Impressions”.

The short version

Set up a proper Page with more than one admin. Film your own content and post it as Reels. Ask questions people want to answer. Use links sparingly. Be helpful in local Groups. Watch shares and messages, not just views.

Last checked: 8 November 2026. Facebook changes often, and we update this guide when it does.

Sources

More on: Facebook Platform guides Video Your voice

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