Over on The New York Times Nick Bilton writes about the increasing cost of sharing on Facebook. In short, despite denials from the company, anecdotal evidence shows that Facebook is diminishing the distribution of organic content in the news feed (Facebook’s primary content distribution mechanism) in favor of paid posts (aka ads).
He writes…
Every Sunday morning, I started sharing my weekly column with this newfound entourage. Those garnered a good response. For example, a column about my 2012 New Year’s resolution to take a break from electronics gathered 535 “likes” and 53 “reshares.” Another, about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, owing me $50 after the company’s public offering, quickly drew 323 likes and 88 reshares.
Since then, my subscribers have grown to number 400,000. Yet now, when I share my column, something different happens. Guess how many people like and reshare the links I post?
…
From the four columns I shared in January, I have averaged 30 likes and two shares a post. Some attract as few as 11 likes. Photo interaction has plummeted, too. A year ago, pictures would receive thousands of likes each; now, they average 100. I checked the feeds of other tech bloggers, including MG Siegler of TechCrunch, and reporters from The New York Times, and the same drop in interaction has occurred.
While the actual reasons for the variability in visibility for content may vary, they inevitably come back to the ‘Algorithm’ Facebook uses to surface content they think is relavent to their users. Like Google’s ‘Page Rank’ Facebook uses something called ‘Edge Rank’.
Like with Google Search, changes to Facebook’s algorithm can greatly affect the flow of traffic to your site. Unlike Google, though, few companies encourage their audiences to ‘Google them’ in the same way they spend millions of dollars promoting their Facebook pages on superbowl ads and other venues.
By doing this, rather than promoting their own websites, brands are essentially outsourcing their engagement platforms to Facebook. It’s a fairly easy tactical decision that marketers make and one that has been rewarded by internal KPIs like ‘how many likes do we have?’ or ‘get us more followers on Twitter!’.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the emphasis on Facebook and Twitter is not a strategically sound decision. The value of ‘Likes’ and ‘Follows’ varies at the whim of these 3rd party platforms and brands are essentially paying millions of dollars on a mediated platform like TV only to funnel their users to yet another mediated platform that demands yet more dollars for access.
Instead, Echo customers like ESPN, AMC, UMG, NBCU and others are making a different choice. They are building first class engagement experiences on their own websites and promoting their own URLs in ads and other marketing collateral. In this way they are creating a direct relationship with their customers, enjoying full creative and brand freedom and owning the data and revenue outcomes.
The Echo platform, SDKs, Apps and Professional Services makes this relatively inexpensive and quick to execute and, with a little thought, out performs basic ‘social campaigns’ in both the short term tactical sense (increased sharing by broadcasting “on page actions” across multiple social networks at once, creating more differentiated brand experiences and owning users and data) and the long term strategic sense (by avoiding the trap of paying twice for customer access and being subject to the whim of 3rd party media companies).
So as the cost (and uncertainty) of sharing on social networks continues to rise, it’s clear that owning the experience, the users and the data is the best tactical and strategic decision moving forward.
