Explore how churches can adapt to Facebook's new 2-link limit, discover practical workarounds, and learn digital ministry strategies in this MyCom podcast episode.
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In this episode of the MyCom Church Communications and Marketing Podcast, host Ryan Dunn is joined by Meghan Claussen, Director of Communications at First United Methodist Church of San Diego, for an essential update on Facebook’s latest link posting limits and how these changes impact church pages. Whether you're a ministry leader, communications director, or digital volunteer, you'll gain practical strategies for adapting to the new Meta One link limits, learn which workarounds actually work, and discover how to keep your congregation engaged online—even with fewer clickable links.
Explore insights into:
- Why Facebook made this change and what it means for churches
- The real impact of limited link sharing on ministry engagement
- Tactics for sharing event details, livestreams, and important updates without relying on direct link posts
- Rethinking your content strategy to prioritize what truly connects with your community
- Measuring success beyond link clicks: metrics of real ministry impact
- Empowering your congregation as digital evangelists
Helpful links from this episode:
- San Diego First UMC's Digital Workshops for congregants
- FUMCSD's Facebook Page
- Information on Facebook's Notable Verified Badge
- Meta One
In this episode:
00:00 - Introduction: The new Facebook link limits explained
02:13 - How Meta is rolling out changes and what it costs
05:36 - Real-world impact at First Church San Diego
07:03 - How much do link posts actually matter?
09:13 - Strategies when you can’t post as many links
11:29 - Rethinking success metrics for digital ministry
13:59 - Prioritizing content that works on Facebook
16:15 - Repurposing sermons and ministry content
17:33 - Practical workarounds for event and resource sharing
19:19 - Profile links, link hubs, and easy URLs
21:12 - Messenger automations, Stories, and group options
22:38 - Empowering your church members as advocates
24:04 - Training your congregation in digital evangelism
26:09 - Considering Meta One subscriptions wisely
27:39 - Bringing the church to people via online platforms
30:12 - Next steps and continuing the journey
Related episodes:
- Church social media strategies for the new year
- "Rewild" Church with deeper community engagement and digital tools
Related resources:
Episode transcript
Meghan Clausen [00:00:00]:
And then the other thing, I was listening to a book about something completely different, but it had this nugget of wisdom and it was actually, uh, it had to do with like medical advances. And, and it said, just because there's a new technology available doesn't mean it's gonna be the right solution.
I'm like, oh, it's so true. Like in communications as well, just because now you can have this paid subscription so we can do more links. Doesn't mean that that's actually the solution with what we want to accomplish.
Ryan Dunn [00:00:38]:
That's Meghan Claussen, the Director of Communications at First United Methodist Church of San Diego. Facebook, as you may know, is now limiting a lot of church pages to just 2 link posts a month unless you know, you pay up. Meghan and I talked about what that means for churches, the workarounds worth trying, and why just maybe this might be a good thing for our ministries. This is the MyCom Church Communications and Marketing Podcast. We're building your digital ministry toolkit and bringing your congregation into the digital age. My name is Ryan Dunn. I'm a fellow traveler on the journey To better church connections. All right.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:23]:
Meta is at it again, changing its systems in ways that upset the plans of communicators and marketers. If you manage a church Facebook page or ministry Facebook page, you may have already seen the popup. It tells you that your page can add links to 2 posts this month. After that, if you want more, Facebook points you to the Meta One subscription. Here's what we know right now. This is October of 2026. Meta started testing this limit back in December of 2025. At the time, it said that the test applied to Facebook pages and to profiles in professional mode.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:05]:
And the way to get more links was to pay for Meta Verified. Then in September of this year, Meta introduced Meta One. That's a subscription bundle that covers Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Meta AI around the same time, the 2-link limit started showing up on a lot more pages. So how does this work? If your page is part of the rollout, you can include 2 links in 2 organic posts or comments per month. The count resets on the first of each month. And yes, comments do count. So the old trick of dropping the link in the first comment won't get you around this limit. There are a few exceptions.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:53]:
Links in ads don't count. Links to Meta's own platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads do not count. Affiliate links don't count. And once a post already has a link in it, additional links in the comments of that post don't count. News publishers also are exempt, at At least for the time being here in October of 2026. If you want more links, here's the price list for MetaOne's business plans. The Essential plan is $14.99 a month, $14.99 a month, but that doesn't actually add any links. You're still at 2.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:36]:
If you want more links, you're going to jump up to the Advanced plan. That's $49.99 a month, and that gets you links in 8 Facebook posts. Expert is $149 a month. That gets you up to 20 links. And then of course you can jump up to the Max level. That's $499 a month. That removes the Facebook limit. One more thing, those prices are per account.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:04]:
So if your church runs a main page, And then also runs a youth page and say like a preschool page, those are each going to cost separate subscriptions and those costs add up quickly. I'm sure you're doing the math already. The rollout for this has been pretty uneven. As of this recording, the pages that I manage here for the United Methodist Communications properties haven't been limited. However, Meghan's church got hit back in August.
Meghan Claussen [00:04:36]:
So I think that, I think the jury is still out as far as the impact, right? Because it's pretty new for, for First Church San Diego. Um, I had heard whispers about this in a church communications group that I'm part of on Facebook. And I was like, I don't know what you all are talking about. I'm still posting links. Um, and so definitely Meta has been doing this as a slow rollout, right? But then in sometime mid-August, it hit us. I'm like, oh, I guess we are affected. But, um, so at first, you know, with any change, you have that moment of panic, like, oh my goodness, what do I need to do?
Ryan Dunn [00:05:19]:
That moment of panic is real. And part of what makes this hard is that Meta hasn't really said much about it. So why is Meta doing this? Well, Meghan has a theory.
Meghan Claussen [00:05:30]:
I think part of it, so there's not a major revolt.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:35]:
Yeah.
Meghan Claussen [00:05:36]:
Um, and it seems like a large piece of this really is they've invested a lot in their own proprietary AI and now they need people to use it and to get money off of it.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:46]:
Yeah.
Meghan Claussen [00:05:46]:
Because they need to show their investors that this was a lucrative investment.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:53]:
There's something to that. When Meta announced these business plans, links were not the headline. A lot of the pitch was about expanded access to Meta's AI Business Agent and other paid tools along with it. The link limit is one piece of a bigger push to get businesses, and of course churches wrapped up in those businesses, paying for a subscription. And to be fair, I guess, for close to 20 years, Facebook has given organizations like ours free access to its users, right? We've been able to post links and then send those users somewhere else really at no cost to us. And now I'm not here to defend Meta's business practices, but I guess you could say that it's not really shocking that a business eventually wants to charge people to be able to do that. All right, so how big of a deal is this really? I wanna make the case that for most of us, it's a smaller deal than what it might actually feel like at the get-go. Every quarter, Meta publishes something called the Widely Viewed Content Report.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:03]:
It breaks down what people in the United States actually see on their Facebook feeds. In the most recent report, which covers the first quarter of 2026, 98% 0.7% of feed views were on posts that did not include a link to anything outside of Facebook. Just 1.3% did include a link to something outside of Facebook. And that number really has been falling for years. When Meta first released its, its initial report back in 2021, just under 13% of views were on posts with link. It's dropped about tenfold in that 5-year span. In other words, Facebook has actually been limiting your link posts for a long time. It just did it quietly through the algorithm.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:56]:
Now it's putting a number on it. If your link posts weren't getting seen anyway, going from unlimited to 2 may not change your results all that much. Meghan actually checked this against her own numbers.
Meghan Claussen [00:08:13]:
I also did a quick check because I did used to post links, um, every week for our livestream, which is on YouTube. And I'm like, I don't really think it did much for us on, on Facebook, you know, and obviously on Instagram. And I looked and sure enough, like for the whole year, the average of like, um, livestream traffic from Facebook to YouTube was like less than 300. views for an entire year, including Christmas and Easter. So I'm like, okay, like that really, you know, I know that that was like a big conversation that was a part of last week with the United Methodist Association of Communicators. People were asking like, okay, well, what about the live streams? And so I think that if someone, like for us, again, we have a vanity URL that's fumcsd.org/youtube. And that will take you to our YouTube channel. We also have our YouTube channel saved in our Instagram and Facebook profile links.
Meghan Claussen [00:09:13]:
And so I think if someone really wants to join the livestream and you're saying like, oh, it's on our YouTube channel or it's on our website, that, um, someone will be able to go out there and engage with it if you have an easy-to-find website or channel.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:30]:
Fewer than 300 views from Facebook to YouTube over an entire year with Christmas And Easter included. That's worth checking for your own church before you decide like how much this change really hurts. Open up your website analytics or your YouTube analytics and see how much traffic Facebook actually really truly sends you. Now, I don't want to oversell this because sometimes a link is actually the right tool. If you're selling tickets, if you're taking registrations or collecting gifts, people need to get somewhere outside of Facebook. And if your ministry depends heavily on Facebook traffic, this change will hit you harder than the averages suggest. A limit always bites hardest for the people who are actually using that thing that's being limited. But for most churches, links have actually been a small part of what actually works on Facebook.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:28]:
And that points to a bigger opportunity. So after this moment of panic, Meghan went back to her church's strategy.
Meghan Claussen [00:10:37]:
But then I thought back to our strategy and what we've been doing with our social media. And the past couple of years, I've really been leaning more into, um, repurposing messages that we're already doing for Sunday mornings or for our, our podcasts and really just doing short clips, um, to get out the message out there. Um, on Facebook, on Instagram. I'm the director of communications, um, at the church, and I also like to call myself our digital evangelist. So that's a lot of what we're trying to do. Um, obviously we want people to follow us. We would love people to go out to our livestream on YouTube or find our podcast on other platforms or register for an event. But at the end of the day, my primary goal is just to share our theological viewpoints.
Meghan Claussen [00:11:30]:
Um, a lot of our messages are maybe different than what people are seeing from other pastors and churches and faith leaders on social media. And so I ultimately just want to make sure our message gets out there. Getting a click is like a secondary goal. So for me, ultimately, it's not affecting our overarching strategy. Um, that said, Christmas is coming.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:57]:
Yeah. So getting a click is a secondary goal. I think that's the heart of this whole conversation. It's easy to slip into using social media to serve our, um, organizational needs, right? We need registrations. We need attendance. We need livestream views. Those things matter, but they're our goals. They're not necessarily the goals of the people scrolling past our posts.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:23]:
I asked Meghan how she measures whether her content is working if it's not by link clicks.
Meghan Claussen [00:12:30]:
Yeah. So, um, in the marketing world, a lot of times you'll hear the term vanity metrics, right? And those are those metrics that you, like, everyone wants. It's kind of like that keeping up with the Joneses type of syndrome, right? Everyone wants to be able to show that they got like so many link clicks, but when you think about it, like, was that really my primary goal? Right. And so for me, what's more important than that is how long are people actually watching these reels? Are they saving them or sharing them? Right. Shares, I think, are like the ultimate thing because it shows that someone not only found value for themselves, but they're willing then to share it with their network. And that has a halo effect then, um, because that sends a signal to the platforms that, wow, this is really, um, high-value content. And so they're going to start showing up more to people outside of your followers. Um, we have to all keep in mind that at the end of the day, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Um, they're all businesses and how they make their money is through advertising and how they get those advert— that the eyes on those ads is by keeping people on their platform.
Speaker B [00:13:59]:
Yeah.
Meghan Claussen [00:14:00]:
So they're going to then prioritize the content that keeps, keeps people on the platform. Um, and so if that is, you know, a sermon clip, a podcast clip, a member testimony, uh, music, anything else that's associated with our ministries that also then is going to be some like soul-feeding message, then it's a win-win, right? We, we get to share that component of evangelism, which ultimately is our call, and that platform You know, it has a captive audience for that much longer.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:42]:
That's the overlap that we're looking for. Meta wants content that keeps people on Facebook. Of course, we want to share a message that feeds people spiritually. Where those 2 goals meet is where our content really truly does its best work. Meghan even questions one of the oldest numbers that we track.
Meghan Claussen [00:15:02]:
And honestly, thinking about how I can consume content on like Instagram, I very rarely follow content creators because once you start engaging with them, they like show up on your feed. And so I realized that perhaps even followers has become a vanity metric.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:24]:
So what kind of content lives in that overlap? For First Church of San Diego, it's mostly content that they're already making.
Meghan Claussen [00:15:33]:
Yeah. So at First Church, a lot of it is, like I mentioned, um, clips from our Sunday sermon. I'm starting to do that weekly now. I used to do it like a little bit more sparingly. Um, but now I'm realizing that you, you can't do it too much, especially since the algorithm doesn't show it to someone every time. Right. Um, and so always there's going to be something in that sermon that's rather intriguing. And for me, maybe a different message than what someone might be hearing elsewhere, right? The Methodist Church, we're all about social action and justice, and you don't always hear that in the pulpit of other churches.
Ryan Dunn [00:16:15]:
I want to underline that. You probably don't need to make more stuff. You need to take what you already make, like sermons, podcasts, testimonials, and music, And bring it onto the platform in a form that works there. Dropping in here with a quick message from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Whether you know you're called or are just curious about your faith, Garrett Seminary offers plenty of pathways for United Methodist students who want to take the next step. Get a certificate in the Foundations of Methodist Ministry to explore your Wesleyan roots. Discern your call to ministry as a deacon in the Deacon Discernment Cohort, or connect with the team to find your next most faithful step. Visit garrett.edu/mycomm to find your pathway.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:09]:
All right, let's get practical. There are ways to work within these limits, the 2-post limit, and I'll be honest, none of them is really as efficient as just posting a link. If your goal is to get a link Posting a link is the best way to get to that result. But some of these tactics might make your ministry a little bit stronger. First, Facebook events. Remember how Meghan said Christmas is coming?
Meghan Claussen [00:17:39]:
And we do, we do host like free community concerts and other special events that we absolutely would want someone to be able to click through and get those details. I have discovered, because we do have a 2-day choral music festival coming up, it actually has paid tickets. It's a benefit toward our racial justice ministry. And one of the things I always do with these type of events is I set up an event on Facebook. Those Facebook events will still link through to the ticketing websites, and it doesn't count as far as I can tell. didn't count toward one of our links for the month. Um, I guess I will see if I try to do another post with a link, but it seems like it was outside of that, um, organic link count.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:31]:
A lot of it right now is just kind of try it and see. Um, that's what you're kind of experiencing with the events and what I've heard up to this point. is that events are not limited in any way. And one of the workarounds may actually be then to post the link in your event post and then share that post across your page. Exactly. So for anything with tickets or registration, create a Facebook event, put your outside link in the event and share the event to your page. And then watch your link count to make sure it doesn't change. This is still try it and see kind of territory, but it's our understanding that links on Facebook events are not limited.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:19]:
Second, put your links where people actually expect to find them. That might be the links section of your profile or a link hub like Linktree in your bio. Meghan uses the profile links that are built into Instagram. There are trade-offs, of course, with a link hub. It's one more thing for you to keep updated. It's one more thing or one more step that a user has to take. And of course that leads into some drop-off in hoped-for actions. Just need to look at picking the approach that you'll actually maintain, I suppose.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:50]:
All right, third, and this is one of my favorites, utilize some vanity URLs if you can.
Meghan Claussen [00:19:58]:
The other thing I will say that I make sure to do with our, with our, our video clips, as well as like static image type posts, is I'm a big fan and always have been a big fan of using, um, like vanity URLs. And so, um, our website, it's fumcsd.org, right? And so then it's like /events/sermon/podcast. So something that's really memorable and easy for someone to go into their own like phone or web browser to type.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:33]:
So a short web address like firstchurch.org/christmas works in a caption. It works in a video on a slide and from the pulpit, and it doesn't account It doesn't count against any limit and people can actually remember it. The point here is that you're not making it something clickable, a clickable link inside of a post. You might be embedding this in an image or across a video screen. It's just something for remember to, for people to remember, and then they can easily input it on their own. All right. There are a few more tools to consider. You can set up a Messenger automation.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:12]:
So that when someone comments or messages you a keyword, like say Christmas, they get the link sent right to them. That adds a step, but it also has the possibility of possibly starting a conversation. And you can post links in Facebook Stories. Stories only last for 24 hours, of course, and they only reach people who already follow you. But so far, links there don't seem to count against the 2-link limit. Facebook groups also seem to not be affected. And if your organization is large enough, you might actually qualify for a free notable verified badge from Facebook. My understanding is that verified pages are exempt from the limit, at least for now.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:59]:
Again, this is October 26th. I'll put Facebook's help article on how that, how you can apply for that verified page in the show notes. Now, you may also hear that posting through a third-party scheduler like Hootsuite or Sprout Social gets around the limit. That seems to be the case so far in October of 2026, but Meghan and I were both a little skeptical of that. So maybe just give it a test if you use a scheduler, but don't build a long-term strategy counting on that. Now, here's the workaround that I think maybe has the most potential for growth. The limit applies to pages, but it doesn't apply to people. Your members can post as many links as they want from their personal profiles.
Meghan Claussen [00:22:47]:
Now, the other thing I've discovered, um, and this is interesting because like I said, I view myself as our digital evangelist. I also view myself as educating our congregation as how they too can do digital evangelism. Um, from my personal posts. I've been able to share sermon clips and then add a link into that personal post. So I think part of it also is educating our congregants, our faith communities, that we can no longer post these links directly, but you can. So when you share this with your friends and family, your social media connections, make sure to drop that link in on Facebook.
Ryan Dunn [00:23:30]:
So the boost here is that that moves communications from something the staff does to something that the whole congregation kind of participates in. And First Church San Diego has done real work to equip people for that. A couple of years ago, they hosted hands-on tech workshops for their congregation, and I'll put a link to that series in the show notes. Meghan admits that it's a little dated at this point, but it's really useful to look and see how they went about the business of equipping their congregation to use some of these technical or digital tools.
Meghan Claussen [00:24:04]:
You know, it is time for us to do that again. Um, we hosted a series of in-person workshops, maybe learning labs is what you would really call them, um, about 6 months after I had joined the staff, but that was a couple years ago and we've had, you know, um, new people coming. Um, some people in our congregation didn't have internet and phones at that time, and now they do. Um, and so we do need to do a refresh of that. Um, it was such joyful work for me because I discovered that individuals that, um, were of, um, older generations or of, we like to call them our seasoned saints, they were so eager to learn how to, how to use these technologies and platforms to help spread the word about the church. Um, and they are really excited when they learn something new and they make sure to drop into my office or connect with me on Sunday to show me what they're doing. Um, and so it's, it's just like so cool to see that. Um, and also, you know, I will join our church council meetings to give some quarterly reports about how we're doing with our communications.
Meghan Claussen [00:25:26]:
And I get questions there. asking like, okay, so if we comment, if we share, you're saying that's going to boost how many people are seeing it. So they get it and they want to know how they can partner alongside me to help increase that reach. So I 100% recommend that other churches do this. Um, and just be prepared to do really, um, what you might think is very basic instruction.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:59]:
That's very cool because the workshops build skills, but they also build relationships, and they make your congregation part of how the church reaches people. Okay, finally, there's the option of, I guess, the nuclear option of simply paying up to use Meta's tools. Here's one way of thinking about it, though. Organic link posts get very little reach on Facebook. When I really need a link to get traction, I generally end up boosting it, meaning that I pay Meta, I pay Facebook to show it to people. Meta is pitching that Meta One is a way to make link posts more visible. So if your church is already paying to boost link posts, a subscription may cover some of what you were spending on boosts. That's how I'm trying to calm myself down anyway.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:54]:
Just remember that the Essential plan, of course, doesn't add links and Advanced at $49.99 a month per account is the lowest tier that does. You're going to have to do the math against your boosting budget before you sign up, of course. And keep in mind what Meghan said at the top of the show, a new tool isn't always the right solution for what you're trying to accomplish. And that really brings me to the bottom line. If we want Facebook to stay a useful channel for ministry, the answer isn't to find, I guess, more clever ways to push people off of Facebook, but it might actually be to bring more of our ministry onto the platform.
Meghan Claussen [00:27:39]:
And really, that's been our whole goal at First Church San Diego with our Rewilding initiative is instead of forcing people to come to the church, how can we bring the church to them? You know, how can we accommodate the needs of today's culture and society? And so that's why to me, bringing like the pieces of the messaging to the social media platforms is so important and not requiring someone then to come out and connect with our website or elsewhere. You know, if all they have is a couple of minutes in their day to fill their spiritual cup, then I'm able to provide them that directly on Facebook or Instagram.
Ryan Dunn [00:28:21]:
This is kind of an overarching challenge. Instead of forcing people to come to church, how can we bring church to them? That's a communication strategy, of course. It's also a pretty good description of mission, and it isn't always comfortable because the measures that we're used to, like full pews or in our cases link clicks and follower counts, still pull at us?
Meghan Claussen [00:28:45]:
You know, it's hard. It's hard because we all want to fill the pews, right? Um, it looks good on the livestream when it's a full church. We had a huge rain— well, it wasn't even that huge. There was, um, the aftereffect of a tropical storm that came through, um, San Diego and LA counties. Um, last Sunday and our church was so empty and I was embarrassed when I looked at the livestream and you could just see it was so empty, but our YouTube chat, it was hopping because people were on there. Right. And so it's like, again, that's just one of those vanity things and it's really hard to let go of.
Ryan Dunn [00:29:32]:
And of course there's the barrier that we're not completely comfortable with Meta's business practices. And that's a fair debate to have. But here's where Meghan lands.
Meghan Claussen [00:29:41]:
No, I know. And that's always the debate too. Like obviously there's, you know, we don't all agree with their business practices and things they support, but at the end of the day, for me still, we're gonna be on Facebook. We're gonna be on Instagram because so many people use it. And again, if that's where they are to get their content, their education, you know, their relaxation, recreation, then that's where we need to be going as a church.
Ryan Dunn [00:30:12]:
So maybe start here. Check whether your page has actually been limited and then look at how much traffic Facebook really does send to you by checking your website or by checking YouTube to see if any traffic is coming over from Facebook to those locations. Save your 2 links a month for the things that truly need them. And use events, profile links, and vanity URLs if they're available to you for the rest. Equip your people to share and put more of the content that feeds people directly on the platform where they already are. This is going to keep changing. Meta is still rolling this out really unevenly, I might add, and the details might look different a few months from now. If that leaves you feeling like you're always playing catch-up, well, Guess what? You're actually in pretty good company.
Meghan Claussen [00:31:03]:
You know, it's interesting. I was talking with a college student from my alma mater last week, and she's in her senior year and she has some great internship opportunities where she is very hands-on with social media. Right now she's looking at analytics and I'm like, that's amazing. And I'm going to tell you a secret. I'm like, imposter syndrome is really real. And I know that with your internships and when you go out as a, as a new entry-level professional, you're going to feel intimidated by us seasoned people, but we're in the same place as you because these platforms change every month, you know? So like, we're all in this together and constantly trying to figure out.
Ryan Dunn [00:31:47]:
My thanks to Meghan Clausen for sharing her experience at First Church San Diego with us. You'll find links to everything that we talked about in the show notes. I want to thank Thank you for taking this journey with us on the MICOM Church Communications and Marketing Podcast. You can learn more about the podcast, you can find those oft-mentioned episode notes, and of course get more resources for your digital ministry toolkit at resourceumc.org/micom-podcast. MICOM is a production of United Methodist Communications. This podcast comes out monthly. I want to give my thanks to Renee McNeil and Andrew Schweiker for their production and marketing support. My name is Ryan Dunn.
Ryan Dunn [00:32:29]:
I'll talk to you in a month. Peace.