Being Meaningful with Video: A Social Media Marketing World Keynote Review
In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg ruined Facebook for social media marketers. We should have seen it coming some years ago, but we didn’t, and are now paying for it.
A bit harsh for a lead-in, but bear with me.
In an intensive and information-filled keynote session, Michael A. Stelzner detailed the long and rather painful history of Facebook’s relationship with content and how it is displayed to its users. In 2014–5, Facebook introduced it’s Trending area, as well as native video and FB Instant Articles. As a result of this, users were encouraged to consume and explore content mainly within Facebook’s ecosystem; without the need to go outside of the ecosystem, Facebook content creators and publishers saw the need to produce content within the platform for better reach.
With these platform features flourishing, publishers and creators noticed a distinct change on how their content was consumed; external link reach of articles and videos fell precipitously, while FB-native content continued to see great success. In addition to this, Facebook’s Trending area drove 31% of referrals online. Content was being exclusively hosted on Facebook, closing the content ecosystem and creating an environment where marketers and creators needed to stay within the bounds of the platform in order to create and expand their reach.
Then, the bottom fell out when Mark Zuckerberg announced a significant shift in Facebook’s priorities: gone were the days when “content was king”, and in came the new Facebook policy of creating “meaningful social interactions”.
Fast forward to 2018: over 50% of publishers leave Facebook’s Instant Articles platform, social sharing drops 50%, referral traffic drops, and thousands of journalists are laid off when content teams realize that one of the largest social media platforms in the world has de-prioritized content in favor of social interactions.
Quite basically, Facebook now is about people connecting to people; not content.
In fact, so drastic is this change in operation logic that The Atlantic (ironically, one of Facebook’s first Instant Article publishers) recently stated that Facebook could be “unrecognizable” by 2020.
So what do social media strategists and marketers do about this “brave new world”?
The answer, Stelzner says, lies in removing ourselves from the myth of “bigger is better”. When we start to recognize that influence is a more powerful metric than basic clicks or pageviews, we can start to craft content and strategies to meet this new environment. With that in mind, Stelzner shares three platforms and strategies to consider when navigating this new environment.
Instagram Stories
With Mark Zuckerberg’s stated intention of having users go from a Feed-only environment to a Feed+Stories environment, marketers and creators can immediately begin utilizing the Facebook/Instagram Stories feature to create compelling, traffic-driving content that gets views, followers and influence. With Instagram Stories, one would be accessing a feature that over 500 million people accessed in February 2019 alone; with it’s encouragement of short-form video and a 24-hour viewing range, Instagram Stories is an easy way to generate “daily influence”.
Facebook Live
With the prioritization being on “meaningful social” products, Facebook now will be seen more as a platform to incite live video actions, over passive video watching. This would mean that the Facebook Live platform creates a special environment to reach and connect with fans, followers and potential new customers. Being a live platform, FB Live encourages a raw, real format that humanizes a brand or person and encourages a level of personality and trust.
YouTube
Not to be counted out, YouTube is now starting to be seen as a long-form video competitor to Facebook’s video-hosting capabilities and platform. With 81% of Facebook users also being active YouTube users, and with over 1 billion hours of content being watched daily on the platform, YouTube provides a platform that users are not only familiar with, but are also more comfortable watching long-form content on. And with playlists, end cards and subscription/notification options, YouTube will continue to be a platform that marketers and creators can count on to host, post and share content that builds and maintains influence and following.
The theme of the keynote was all about video, and was an encouragement to all attendees to not be afraid of changing their strategies to meet this new world. We are in the attention-capturing business, and these changes and platforms will continue to allow marketers and creators the chance to capture and captivate their audiences.
