WHAT ARE SOCIAL MEDIA ALGORITHMS
Last week, Instagram (the photo-sharing social media site owned by Facebook) announced that it will change the way its news feed, or how it delivers content to users, works.
As already happened for Facebook, an algorithm will define what content to show to each user (including advertising) based on the interactions they have made, the content they share and the topics that seem to interest them.
VISIBILITY AND INTEREST
Knowing how the algorithms that regulate the visibility of content work is very important for social media marketing professionals, but above all for companies and brands that want to make themselves known through social media .
Just take a look at the data reported in the infographic on the side to notice how only a part of the published contents is actually seen by fans and followers.
Advertising or SMA (social media advertising) to increase visibility (by paying) certainly helps, but it is not enough.
Facebook, for example, has managed to keep its users constantly active over the last year thanks to its algorithm: its function is to show people content that interests them, that entertains them, that excites them. This goal is achieved, however, also by limiting the visibility of brands and businesses .
THE (SOCIAL MEDIA) MARKETING PARADOX
While on the one hand emerging and non-emerging social channels are a good opportunity to reach new customers, on the other hand these people are increasingly interested in seeing only the content of their friends .
The path is marked: every new social media in order to grow, after having passed the incubation period, needs companies that pay to be visible.
When this happens, however, the amount of commercial content increases exponentially , naturally reducing people's willingness to interact and their interest.
This particular point is the most complex and controversial to explain to companies: social media are a theater in which to make yourself known, but the ticket for spectators must be free and the show must not be boring .
CUSTOMERS OR FRIENDS?
The mechanisms of human psychology are the same in real life and in the virtuality of social media: a person's interest cannot be bought , it is won with empathy, sharing the same principles and above all with time .
And from here comes this reflective post on the teaching that algorithms can give to the general discipline of marketing, with a message suitable for this Easter Monday: "Love your neighbor as if he were yourself"... and maybe one day he will become a customer.