2019’s biggest channel updates are here — what does it mean for brands?

Over the past month, we’ve seen some of the biggest overhauls on social media for a long time, but it goes a lot deeper than a design change or a new tab on your newsfeed — some of these changes will have a huge impact on your social media activity and shouldn’t be brushed aside. We unpack what they mean in real terms for internet users and look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved. 👇

Strengths

Original Content Ranking

Recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm seek to strengthen its position as a video sharing platform by placing greater weighting behind original and engaging content, in their own words, Facebook wants to see content that is authentic, enduring, and memorable.

Previous algorithm changes essentially made the platform pay-to-play for creators, many of which abandoned the platform as they experienced dramatic decreases in organic reach, so this move appears to be an attempt to lure talented creators and filmmakers back to the platform under the guise that the algorithms will help them connect with viewers and offer the ability to monetise these audiences through subscriptions and ad breaks.

So not only will these changes favour original content but it will seek to limit the distribution of unoriginal and repurposed content — in an announcement on the Facebook blog, this is characterised as;

“Posting content that already exists on Facebook or that has been posted somewhere else first and which you had no meaningful role in creating”

In an effort not to expel legitimate creators that do rely on sourcing and repurposing content such as news outlets, reviewers and editors, repurposing content that has been meaningfully transformed will not result in being penalised by the algorithm. Meaning that if you’re in a position where you need to use a piece of content that you’ve not created yourself, you’ll need to enhance it and add your own spin rather than just stitching clips together and passing it off as your own.

For brands and creators that are already producing original content, the changes are no doubt a huge strength as they’ll experience greater visibility without the expense of hiring a new content team. But for brands that rely on stock videos or media pages that simply licence a video and add their own logo to the corner, your days could be numbered if you don’t adapt or bring something new and meaningful to the conversation.

Weaknesses

Death Of The Newsfeed

There’s no doubt that one of the biggest talking points from Facebook’s F8 conference is the increasing importance of groups. Zuckerberg is determined to make groups front and centre in your Facebook experience, reducing the prevalence of the news feed as we know it.

It should come as no surprise that Facebook has latched onto the importance of groups. As of April 2019, 2.28bn people log onto Facebook every single month and once you get to those numbers it becomes less of a community and more of a room of people shouting over each other.

The emergence of groups came as people needed a place to connect with other users with the same niche interests — something that they weren’t able to do with existing friends and connections. People retreated away from the traditional newsfeed and formed their own communities.

So what’s changing? A new personalised feed of group activity is on the way, allowing you to quickly catch up on content from groups that you’re a member of. Facebook will also be doing its bit to aid the discovery of new groups — claiming to have “made discovery better than ever”.

Launching an ad campaign to support groups using the tagline of ‘More Together’, the platform is positioning the feature as something that not only enables online conversation but something that transcends into real life activity.

The change to news feeds and groups can hit brands hard because they’ve spent years and hundreds of thousands of pounds creating content to appeal to the masses and running fan acquisition ads to build an audience, just for Facebook to make it worthless overnight. What good are all of those fans you’ve paid for if you’re unable to serve content to them without paying again for the privilege? The reduction of the relevance of the news feed will have drastic repercussions on organic reach, if people are retreating into groups consisting of like-minded individuals, it effectively shuts out brands and organisations. Mike Froggatt, a director at Gartner states:

“This, theoretically, will apply across all of Facebook’s properties, and increase the reliance on paid media to ‘insert’ brands into the native social experiences of users.”

The opportunity to reach a hyper-engaged audience through groups is massive for brands, but cutting out the noise and targeting such a niche audience will surely come at a cost and we’d expect cost per lead to rise for the privilege of getting close and personal to an audience through these means.

Opportunities

Loyalty

Just as you’ll rank poorly on Google if your website is full of errors and light on content, you can expect the same from Facebook — clear titles, descriptions and tags are essential for ensuring that you appear in search results and recommendations. Which brings us to our next point — Zuckerberg is rewarding pages that have loyal viewers that go the extra mile and seek out your content — by creating content that turns your page into a destination, Facebook will increase your visibility across the board.

Recurring content themes and topics are a big opportunity to take advantage of the changes, by giving your audience something consistent to look forward to on a particular day of the week or time of the day, it turns your page into a destination rather than something that people stumble across in the newsfeed and Facebook will reward you for your efforts.

Hiding Likes

Announced at the F8 Developers Conference, Instagram is currently testing hiding the number of likes that a post receives for everyone apart from the original poster in a bid to increase the consideration for the post itself, rather than how many likes something receives. After all, if the goal is to generate conversation, the amount of likes doesn’t aid in furthering discussion at all.

Whilst it will be interesting to see how this impacts influencers who often sell themselves in media packs based on how many likes they receive, the big opportunity here lies with Instagram itself — an opportunity to divert the platform towards one that prioritises content and discussion in favour of traditional metrics such as likes. Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently admitted that if he could turn back time, likes would not even be a thing on his platform;

“If I had to start the service again, I probably would not emphasize the follower count as much. I would not emphasize the ‘like’ count as much. I don’t think I would even create ‘like’ in the first place”

It’s yet to be seen how the test audience in Canada is reacting to the changes and how this is impacting levels of sharing and conversation, but if all bodes well then Instagram could thrive by cutting out toxic elements of the service.

Donation stickers

In a move that proves that it’s not always looking out for itself, Instagram has announced the launch of donation stickers for stories, allowing users (in the US) to add stickers to their Instagram stories in the same way as GIFs and polls to raise money for selected charities — without Zuckerberg taking a penny from the proceeds.

Limited to selected non-profits, the inclusion in the US rollout can be a huge opportunity for the charities involved such as GLAAD and Malala Fund as the feature removes several barriers that would generally exist through other donation routes, in addition to the massive exposure that the brands can expect to receive.

However, it shouldn’t be taken as a free win for those involved and charities shouldn’t allow themselves to become complacent — there needs to be a level of investment in community engagement to keep the ball rolling with fundraisers and to prevent users feeling disheartened if their fundraising efforts go unnoticed. Whilst you could easily argue that the concept of charity is to do something without the expectation of a reward, intrinsic rewards such as an Instagram story shoutout or a hall of fame of fundraisers will not only reward those who have already used the function, but could go far to spur on additional donors.

The feature is also an opportunity to develop additional content streams for charities. One of the biggest considerations before donating to a good cause is about where the money goes and what tangible change you’re able to make so creating long form social-first content to sit on IGTV and stories will assist in satisfying the curiosity of potential donors and fundraisers as well as providing further intrinsic rewards for existing fundraisers and donors who are able to see the great work that they’ve contributed to.

Events

As Facebook is placing an emphasis on the ability of groups to facilitate online as well as offline connections, it pushes the events function to take centre stage as an enabler of this activity. The platform will help you discover more things to do in your local area and in practice the changes will seek to increase discoverability among users who may otherwise not know that your event exists.

For brands like bars and restaurants, this can be a godsend on a daily basis with very little additional effort involved, however the possibilities reach much further than this, especially when paired with the new power of groups. Brands now have the power to engage at a deeper level with their most passionate fans. Rather than seeing it as an opportunity to squeeze some extra cash out of them, offline events and activations are a fantastic method to strengthen existing relationships and to reward your most loyal fans, not to mention doubling up as a source of authentic user generated content from your most passionate customers.

Twitter GIFS

In a move towards making exchanges even more seamless and reducing barriers to get involved in a conversation, Twitter has introduced the ability to quote tweet with an image or GIF — something which users have been crying out for, for a long time.

GIFs and memes are Twitter’s unofficial first language and thanks to GIPHY’s handy Twitter integration, it’s never been easier to exclaim your excitement for something with a GIF — after all, the majority of GIFs are universally understood. You don’t need to have watched a TV show or film to understand the reference if someone is showing happiness, celebration or sadness. Jeremy Liew, an early investor of GIPHY discussed the popularity of format;

“GIFs enable users to avail themselves of the entire catalog of popular culture to help express themselves. Art, TV, movies, memes, all become part of the alphabet, enabling richer, funnier, more contextual, more personalized communication than ever before”

So why would this affect anything? Well, tweets with images are 34% more likely to get retweeted that tweets with no images — so when used as part of a reactive social media strategy, it expands the net of who you’re able to communicate with. Some of the biggest tweets of the past few years have been quick-witted replies and quote tweets from brands who focus on community engagement — think of brands like Wendy’s, Netflix and Greggs who routinely rack up hundreds of thousands of engagements on a tweet that likely took seconds to come up with.

The value that a viral tweet can have is astronomical, Carter Wilkinson, a.k.a Chicken Nugget Boy was challenged by Wendy’s to amass 18 million retweets in return for a year of free chicken nuggets — he fell slightly short at 3.5m but Wendy’s rewarded him with the prize anyway as a way of thanks for the record breaking tweet and thousands of press articles that surrounded it — a prize which was surely dwarfed in value by the benefits Wendy’s received. By investing time and energy in community engagement and always having an ear to the ground on popular culture, it’s not only beneficial to deepen relationships and create some laughs with your existing audience, but it will aid in increasing discoverability and brand building in the long run.

Whilst it’s difficult to plan a viral tweet, benefits should also be seen by using GIFs as another source of content — GIFs tend to fall into ‘fair use’ under copyright law and what we’re seeing is a lot more of is brands and famous faces even producing their own content to be syndicated across the GIPHY network in order to benefit from the increased prevalence of the format.

Instagram Collections

Whilst Instagram shopping isn’t a brand new endeavor, we’re finally about to experience a wider roll out — previously only available to selected brands, the feature has been made available to a group of high profile celebrities, influencers and publishers.

Being included in the beta test doesn’t let you sell your own wares at this stage, the feature only allows you to tag brands approved in Instagram’s earlier shopping roll out — so don’t expect to see Kylie Jenner selling her lip kits just yet. Influencers also don’t get a cut of sales but we’d expect tagging agreements to become part of influencer contracts in the future. The entire checkout process takes place within Instagram, providing a seamless shopping experience for consumers so this can be a huge opportunity for brands taking part as a positive shopping experience can reflect positively on the brand.

However where things could become dicey, is when further roll outs expand the pool of who is able to utilise the tagging feature as it could mean a loss of control for brands involved. There are many instances where aspiring influencers tag brands in posts and write copy that suggests that they have been paid for a collaboration, when in reality there is no relationship and they’re trying to bolster their portfolio to appeal to prospective brands looking for a partnership.

Should this happen, brands could lose creative control over the posts that they’re tagged in, blurring the lines between branded content and wannabe branded content — potentially portraying products in a less than ideal fashion. Of course, we’re the biggest advocates of UGC around, but only when sourced from passionate and creative advocates of your brand who use the content to tell as story and to inspire, not influencers leveraging an unattainable sense of aspiration from their following.

We’d be interested in learning how posts utilising the shopping feature will be weighted within the algorithm as well as how Instagram controls the roll out across a wider audience — watch this space.

Threats

Viewing Behaviours

Another algorithm change to help Facebook make the shift towards long-form video will reward content over three minutes long that retains users right to the end — with extra points for content that inspires reactions, comments and shares. Say goodbye to click bait and misleading captions as the algorithm will detect and penalise pages attempting to artificially inflate viewing figures using these means.

The biggest challenge will be to create content that hooks the audience and tells a story — something that gives the viewer a reason to watch to the end. Slideshows and boring transitions just won’t make the cut, Facebook is looking for dynamic content that takes users on a journey — so you can pay for your 3 second views all you want in Business Manager, but that’ll do you no favours for organic reach.

Group Targeting

A caution for some to strongly consider is the teased group targeting options currently in testing for ad manager. There is cause for concern in the safeguarding of people from being targeted by currently unregulated demographic groupings assumed by association of membership to topic groups. This could impact charities for example who may invite vulnerable people to join communities.

If we’ve piqued your interest and you want to have a chat about content marketing or social media, feel free to get in touch; sam@wearecommit.com