Has Ashton Kutcher Solved The Facebook Reach Problem?

On April 27, the Facebook account for the website APlus.com posted a link to a video of a four-year-old child star named Heaven dancing with her four prepubescent backup dancers to the song “Watch Me” by Silento.

The post received engagement from a teeny percent of the account’s 230,000 followers: 78 likes and 13 shares. The post, like almost every other post on the APlus Facebook page, didn’t go viral.

This level of performance is common for Facebook brand pages. After spending years building up their followers, with Facebook’s current news feed algorithm, most brand pages struggle with Facebook reach. Some even question if Facebook reach is moving towards zero. Unless you post something truly remarkable, and sometimes even when you do, the Facebook newsfeed algorithm will only show the post to a small amount of people, preventing it from being widely distributed. Facebook favors some formats, particularly videos, but the only way to guarantee your post is going to be seen by a lot of people is to pay Facebook to show your post to more people.

Well, except for one another way.

On April 28th, Lil Wayne posted the same article with the status “No one on the corna has swagga like us!” It has received 47,810 likes and 8,461 shares. https://www.facebook.com/LilWayne/posts/10150565033794959

Then, on April 29, Ashton Kutcher posted it with the status “Get it girl”. It has received 10,649 likes and 1,458 shares.https://www.facebook.com/Ashton/posts/10152675514982820

On May 6, Britney Spears posted it with the status “All of these girls are such great dancers and they could not be any cuter!! Go, girls!” It has received 35,033 likes and 1,689 shares.https://www.facebook.com/britneyspears/posts/10153291772053234

On May 10, Nikki Minaj posted the it with the status “So cute!” It has received 38,095 likes and 3,103 shares. https://www.facebook.com/nickiminaj/posts/975151049173212

Using the combined followings of Lil Wayne (51 million), Ashton Kutcher (17 million), Britney Spears (39 million), and Nikki Minaj (42 million), the post has received 161,655 total Facebook actions. Not the most Facebook activity ever, but respectable performance. Even with reduced reach on Facebook, accounts with tens of millions of followers can still drive engagement.

What’s interesting is these accounts didn’t randomly all find this viral post. All of the accounts who posted the article are affiliated with the APlus.com website. Ashton Kutcher, who co-founded APlus, uses his millions of followers to drive engagement everyday to APlus posts. Lil Wayne, Nikki Minaj, and Britney Spears are all APlus partners and share APlus posts with their followings.

Most celebrities fill their social media feeds with selfies, information related to their careers, blogs they’ve written, content about various interests and content from sponsors. Ashton, who co-founded the site, has found a use for his millions of followers: powering a general viral media site using his feed.

From his first post on the site in Dec 2013 until the morning of May 17, 2015, Ashton has posted 858 posts linking to APlus on his Facebook feed. During the last six months, he has settled into posting 70–80 posts/month, after posting around 90 posts/month during September, October, and November 2013.

The website initially wasn’t intended to be a general media site. Ashton’s first post on it announced his new site would be “trying to get reviews of the best products on earth.”https://www.facebook.com/Ashton/posts/10151739071012820
But the startup pivoted, and in March 2014, his posts on the site were all linking to viral content.

He’s built a news organization designed to post things that have broad appeal among his followers. So when he posts something, they appreciate it. If he started posting ads, he could also make money, but generally content from sponsors isn’t as appealing as a post designed to be viral.

The posts from APlus celebrity partners are still in the early stages. While the APlus main Facebook has posted 3,892 posts and Ashton has posted 858 posts, his celebrity partners have posted a lot less. Britney Spears has posted 8 posts, Nicki Minaj has posted 9 posts, T.I. has posted 3 posts, Lil Wayne has posted 22 and Lil Wayne’s record label Young Money has posted 24 posts. In May, through May 16th, we’ve seen a surge in celebrity posts with 34 total posts from the celebrity partners.

The benefits of getting celebrities to post your content are obvious. Celebrities have huge followings on social media and fans who follow their behavior. Even with the reduced reach of brand pages, celebrities still have some pull. Furthermore, people look up to celebrities: seeing someone like Nicki Minaj post an article may even increase their likelihood of engaging with that article. Facebook considers it a best practice to build around star Facebook accounts affiliated with a brand. What better stars than international celebrities?

As a quick example of the power of celebrity, in just 8 posts, Britney Spears has produced more comments, likes, and shares than the 3,762 posts during the entire history on the APlus main Facebook account.

But what’s in it for the celebrities? First, the celebrities may be receiving some form of monetary or equity based compensation for posting the websites content. Ashton co-owns the website and, according to Business Insider, “A-list celebrities” were apart of his latest funding round. Second, these viral articles appeal to their followers. Unlike blatant advertisements, viral articles resonate with users following the page. Third, the celebrities have only so much content to post, so these partnerships give them more content to post. In general, the way the news feed works, the more you post on Facebook, the more engagement you get from Facebook.

If you’re a celebrity, you may be afraid to post a lot of viral links. One might argue that people didn’t like the Lil Wayne’s page to see a bunch of arbitrary viral articles. Links to a viral site are off-brand. However, the top three posters of APlus content — Ashton Kutcher, Lil Wayne, and Young Money — have all continued to increase likes as they post APlus articles. Further study is required to determine whether posting APlus articles is better versus other types of posts, but at least posting APlus articles isn’t causing decreases in followers of these pages.

A large number of Facebook users don’t really care about the source of a post, just the post itself. This has allowed viral websites like ViralNova, Diply and Distractify to grow rapidly, and is actually integral to Facebook’s business model, which is mostly based on unknown brands inserting posts into a users’ feed. Facebook users see an article they like and share it, no matter the source. If the segment of users who likes Lil Wayne also likes a viral article, then when Lil Wayne shares it, and they’ll like it, even if they didn’t expect that content from Lil Wayne when they initially liked his page.

Now there are ethical issues with a media organization partnering with a celebrity. For instance, if the celebrity is a partner, will their partnership somehow bias or tarnish their coverage?

But given APlus has received huge traffic from celebrities and the celebrities’ followings haven’t decreased, media organizations wanting to increase their Facebook reach might want to consider hunting for celebrity partners. Celebrities — at least until the next Facebook algorithm change — can spread news better than anyone on Facebook.

(This post originally appeared in the Bialerology newsletter. Subscribe here: http://bialerology.com/ )