Source: DigiDay
The Facebook algorithm change that has publishers panicking may be good news for a certain group inside the industry: influencers and their followers, writes DigiDay.
According to the magazine, Facebook’s decision to favor content from friends and family over posts from (certain) publishers has led agency buyers to encourage clients to focus more on influencer content.
“By prioritizing [user-generated content], Facebook is giving brands an opportunity to double down on influencers that maintain authentic relationships with their audiences,” said Corey Martin, who heads influencer marketing at 360i.
Martin said he takes Facebook’s explanation of the news-feed change at face value — that it wants to clean up a cluttered news feed and potentially cut down on fake news. Facebook is telling agencies they won’t see any major changes for paid promotion, although ad rates might increase.
Marco Hansell, CEO at Speakr, said his company found that influencer content performs between five and 10 times better in terms of engagement when an influencer rather than a brand posts it. And if Facebook is already removing brands from the feed, it increases engagement among accounts with organic engagement.
“It’s now this awesome dynamic where brands show up less in the feed,” said Hansell, “and what’s showing up is content coming from public-figure pages, friends and family.”
Boosting influencer content could be great for Facebook, which has long asked brands and agencies to create a paid strategy for influencer content. By doing that, it can get more ad dollars while getting credit for “cleaning up the feed.”
Organically speaking, influencers rank better than brands in the news feed, and deprioritizing news can be favorable for influencers. And the new algorithm is expected to mostly punish clickbait-style language, which means brands will need to make meaningful and “authentic” content, which creates room for more influencer partnerships.
