What’s Next for Facebook? 4 Changes Businesses Can’t Ignore

Wondering how to keep driving traffic and leads from Facebook now that Meta limits how many links you can share? Want to know how to use Meta’s Muse AI agent, the Forum groups app, and Meta Business Agents in your Facebook marketing?

​In this article, you’ll discover how to work around Facebook’s two-link-per-month limit, how to use Meta’s Muse AI agent safely, and how to put Meta’s new AI tools for groups, Messenger, and lead ads to work for your business.

Meta now limits Facebook pages and personal profiles to two posts with external links per month unless the account pays for a Meta One subscription. Meta tested the limit with select pages in December 2025 and is now enforcing it more widely. Publisher pages belonging to media companies are reportedly exempt.

​The limit covers links in any post, whether it’s a link post, a photo post, or a video post. It also counts links placed in the comments, the workaround many marketers have relied on for years. Once an account reaches the limit, it can still post a link, but the link won’t be clickable. Facebook previewed the change over the past 10 to 12 months, as links added in comments on other people’s posts gradually stopped rendering as clickable.

​Mari Smith sees the limit as a push to keep people on Facebook rather than sending them off-platform, and to drive a new revenue stream. It’s a big change for for-profit marketers and nonprofits that rely on Facebook for website traffic and leads. Her advice is to become far more strategic about the links that do get shared and to move the rest of that traffic through channels that the limit doesn’t touch.

Meta One raises the link cap, but most tiers still have one. The Advanced tier costs $50 per month and allows 8 links per month on Facebook and 4 on Instagram. Unlimited Facebook links require the $500-per-month tier, which still caps Instagram at 12 links per month. All Meta One plans include the verified badge, and according to the plan’s fine print, they also include advanced AI-powered audience insights.

​Businesses already paying $15 per month for Meta Verified don’t need both. Mari expects Meta Verified to eventually be absorbed into the Meta One plans and disappear as a separate product.

​A better use of the same budget is boosting “unicorns,” Mari’s term for a page’s best-performing posts. The process works in three stages:

Mari has published a blog post with 15 workarounds for the link limit. The 15th is paying for ads, which leaves 14 organic options. These are the ones she highlights.

​ Deliver Links Through DMs: Meta has spent years pushing more activity into direct messages, which makes DMs the most natural home for links. Meta Business Suite includes a free comment trigger that works like third-party tools such as ManyChat.

A post invites people to comment with a specific keyword, and anyone who does automatically receives a DM with the link. A page can run several comment triggers, and a team member can step into any of those conversations as a real person.

​ Rotate the Page’s Main Action Button: Every Facebook page comes with a main action button. Changing it periodically to different calls to action keeps a clickable path to the website open without spending one of the two monthly link posts.

​ Link to Meta Properties: The two-link limit applies to external, third-party sites, including a business’s own website. Links to Meta properties are exempt, so posts can still link to an Instagram account, a Facebook event, or a Facebook group.

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​ Pin the Most Important Link: A single post containing the main lead magnet, shop, or subscription offer, pinned to the featured section, stays clickable and visible long after it’s published.

​ Put Links in Stories: Mari doesn’t expect links in Facebook Stories to be limited for now. Story links keep a business top-of-mind and give followers a clickable path.

​ Use a Memorable URL or QR Code: A short vanity URL that people can easily retype, spoken in a video, or shown on screen gets around the limit entirely. A QR code works the same way.

Muse is Meta’s always-on AI agent, positioned as a personal agent for marketers and content creators that remembers context and preferences over time. Unlike a chat assistant, Muse is built to complete tasks end-to-end. Given a goal, it makes a plan, opens its own browser, fills out forms, sends emails, and keeps working even after the app is closed, returning for input only when it needs approval.

​Muse for Small Business extends the agent into a company’s marketing stack. It plugs directly into a Facebook page, Instagram analytics, and ad accounts, plus outside tools such as Shopify, QuickBooks, Klaviyo, and Canva. Other early partners include Slack, Zoom, Asana, Dropbox, and Figma.

Meta says Muse won’t publish content, send messages, or make purchases without a user’s approval. The permissions a user grants still matter. In one widely shared story, a man who had listed a keyboard on Facebook Marketplace had apparently enabled permissions in Muse. The agent chatted with a buyer, confirmed the keyboard was available, and shared the seller’s address, so the buyer showed up at the door before the seller knew he existed.

​To keep the risk low, Mari recommends three ground rules:

Muse also offers a partial workaround for personal profiles that third-party scheduling tools can’t post to. Muse can’t schedule a post in the traditional sense. But when given the post text and a time, it will publish the post at that time. The workaround is limited to text-only posts, with no images or video.

​Muse isn’t widely available worldwide yet. Businesses without access aren’t missing anything urgent.

​ Getting ready for agent shoppers comes down to four things:

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The human who gave the agent its instructions still has to be won over, too.

Meta has fully rolled out Forum, a dedicated smartphone app for Facebook groups that brings all of a person’s communities into one place. Facebook groups are still growing, and the separate app is meant to drive even more usage. Forum currently has no ads. Its comments scroll left to right instead of up and down, and it surfaces comments a member missed and suggests groups to join. A Facebook account is still required to use it.

​Forum also includes Ask, an AI-powered tool built on Meta AI that answers questions using existing Facebook posts and comments. Answers include a summary, bullet points, and linked sources, and tapping a source opens the public group where the discussion took place.

Ask mainly draws on public groups. Private group content generally won’t appear unless it’s anonymized. Private groups can ask members to feature their posts, and each member decides whether to opt in. Prospective members then see those posts as anonymized previews, which Ask may also draw on.

​Admins of large, active groups and people who use Facebook mainly for groups will get the most out of Forum. For most businesses, Mari doesn’t see Forum playing a big role. She also doesn’t think businesses need a weekly or monthly routine of querying Ask to monitor their brand or industry.

Mari judges Facebook groups by return on time, or ROT. Groups are for networking rather than selling, since pushy, salesy behavior doesn’t work there, and results come slowly. What a group does build is top of mind awareness, top-of-funnel interest, and authority, which is how Mari uses her own Social Scoop group. For businesses that do invest in groups, she favors running their own over only participating in others. For the vast majority of businesses, though, groups belong fairly low in the marketing mix.

Pop-up groups are where Mari sees the clearest business use for groups. A pop-up group is a Facebook group that’s open for a finite time and has a specific purpose that’s clear to everyone who joins. Setting one up involves three decisions:

Mari runs pop-up groups for her courses. She’s also offering one for about 10 days as a bonus for people who buy a third-party ads training through her affiliate link.

Meta Business Agents are Messenger agents powered by Meta AI. They answer questions, recommend products, ask qualifying questions, and book appointments right in the DM thread. Meta has also added appointment booking directly in Facebook lead ads, where the thank-you page includes a calendar widget that works with Calendly, HubSpot, and HighLevel. Meta is testing direct checkout inside AI-powered conversations with PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe.

​Most Meta Business Agents currently work within ads. When Mari tested agents on the pages of major brands such as KLM, Levi Strauss, and Sephora, none responded.

​The agents also tie into Meta’s interoperability across WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, Facebook Messenger, and Threads DMs. Wherever a customer first sees a business publicly, they can message it, and a business agent can warm up the prospect and move them toward a buying decision. For businesses hit by the link limit, this is another way to convert interest into action without a link post.

Today’s agents act far more human-like than the rigid, phone-tree-style Messenger bots of 2017 and 2018, which fell apart the moment someone went off script. That flexibility makes the customer experience the focus of design. Mari’s test for any business agent is whether the customer felt helped or handled.

People don’t hate automation; they hate feeling trapped without a choice. A visible way to reach a person solves that. When Mari used ManyChat, the “talk to a human” button was her favorite feature, and people tapped it constantly.

In many parts of the world, buying inside a chat is already how commerce works, as WhatsApp shows, and North America is catching up. Mari expects buyers to get comfortable when three conditions are met: a familiar checkout, such as Shop Pay or PayPal; clear return policies; and a conversation that felt helpful before the buy button appeared.

Ticket size should drive the decision. Impulse and low-ticket purchases are easy to complete in chat. A $5,000 coaching program is different because buyers will want to feel the human relationship behind it.

Mari recommends starting with the boring, high-ROI tools rather than the headline features:

Before automating a single conversation, Mari suggests a business ask what its customers feel when they talk to it today. Her rule: “Automate the answers and never the care.”

Mari Smith , a globally recognized Facebook marketing expert , helps small and medium businesses master organic marketing through Facebook consulting, training, and coaching. Check out her Human Design System training . Follow her on Facebook and Instagram .

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