Facebook whining is a favorite activity of social media marketers everywhere, and this topic is at the forefront.
Facebook is getting less personal
You’ve probably seen headlines about the decline of personal sharing happening on Facebook. Some reports have sounded rather apocalyptic. According to a recent article published on The Information, there’s been a double-digit decline in “original” sharing, or posts that are “personal in nature, as opposed to popular media like links to news sites.”
Facebook could finally be suffering from the MySpace-ification of the News Feed user experience. They’ve added so many bells and whistles (and ads), while promoting the lowest-common-denominator content in their algorithm, that the News Feed feels quite messy—both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.
Now, there are many more private or personal services (Snapchat, messaging apps, Google Groups, etc.) that feature a clean UX and have accumulated the critical mass of early adopters needed to attract the bigger wave of early majority and late majority folks.
People don’t want to broadcast personal updates to impersonal groups of contacts. And as the younger generation grows up, the overwhelming behavior on many channels is no longer dominated by aspirational lifestyle content; it’s increasingly dominated by the quirkiness and creativity that have propelled Snapchat, Vine, and Tumblr to the forefront. Facebook leaves little room for users to create content within the platform the way that each of those do, so users can’t express themselves creatively.
The change in user behavior could also be a bit of a feedback loop, meaning the less users see their friends sharing, the less inclined they themselves are to share. Facebook News Feeds are increasingly being filled with publisher content, which is keeping overall sharing high, but depressing the creation of original content. Dark social channels have earned more and more of users’ precious time—and will start earning ad dollars as well. Dark social refers to the sharing of content outside of what can be measured by analytics programs, often in 1:1 conversations or among groups of friends and colleagues. (Think Facebook Messenger, Google Chat, and messaging apps. And read our related AdAge article: Awakening the Force: How to Use Brand Jedi to Harness ‘Dark Social’.)
Is this bad for marketers? Only if users stop going to the platform entirely, which we aren’t seeing yet. So perhaps we should expect users to consume more and participate less.
Pros and Cons
Con: Change is hard
It’s not easy to adapt to ever-changing platforms and audience behavior while staying focused on your long-term strategy. Unlike many of the near-constant updates and speculations, this shift in user behavior could signal significant changes in the way we connect with and mobilize people (or it may not; only time—or some really smart robots—will tell).
Pro: More action-packed News Feeds
We can take advantage of this trend by experimenting with new ways of asking Facebook audiences to take advocacy actions or share our thought leadership—perhaps by encouraging use of the new feature allowing users to easily share quoted text, announced at this year’s F8 Conference.
The Takeaway
Marketers at all levels can use these new insights to optimize their programs. With increasingly sophisticated data made increasingly available, your team can get smarter about Facebook strategy.
Reconsider measurement
Your goals are more nuanced than conversation volume alone. Now’s a great time to reevaluate what you really want out of digital channels, and how you’re measuring their impact. For example, now that the Save button, which allows Facebook users to save posts for later consumption, is getting more prominence (and has already amassed a loyal user base), it’s likely marketers will have access to that data. Now that any publisher can implement Instant Articles, you should ask yourself: Is site traffic really what we’ve been after, or is it something more directly related to your bottom line? What’s a truer way to measure success for your organization?
Assess which platforms make sense
Many brands and nonprofits have been slow to join their fans and supporters on emerging platforms. Now more than ever, it makes sense to participate in conversations where your fans want to spend their time, whether it’s Snapchat, Slack, or Google Groups.
Giving your audience(s) what they want
It’s not “content” that your fans want—it’s utility, access, information, entertainment. Once you’ve determined how to measure success and identify the platforms that can help you in your endeavor, you can decide how to give your audience what they desire in a way that’s natural to each platform.
And that’s a topic for a whole other article…