Marketers have been saying for awhile now that the way to maximize your reach on Facebook when posting on behalf a Page to attach your message to a graphic of some kind. This became even more true after the move to Timeline. We started creating graphics for every announcement to ensure whatever news we were trying to communicate would reach its intended target by playing into Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm.

Then, Facebook changed their algorithm again a couple months ago. Suddenly, pages reaching 25%-30% if not more of their fans on Facebook found themselves reaching 10% of fans per post.

It appears they’ve changed it again.

Photo posts still seem to get the highest engagement numbers (clicks, shares, comments, likes). However, text-only status updates are getting greater reach numbers. In my experience this week, I posted two messages relevant to a page’s audience. The post on Tuesday was a graphic that included a link to a video in the caption. The post I made today was a status update about an item on sale at an upcoming event. Though the Tuesday post was perhaps more universally relevant to fans, the Wednesday post reached 75% more people.

If you need to broadcast information to your fans, embrace the status update! But if you want to engage them properly, keep doing it with photos.