Facebook Says This Content-Type Gets the Views; LinkedIn to Launch Business Manager; The Power of “Why”

This newsletter contains the show notes for Decoding the Algorithm, a weekly live video news update. Thank you for subscribing!

• Facebook’s Q1 What People See on Facebook report says...?
• A sneak preview of LinkedIn's upcoming Business manager.
• This test feature on Instagram made businesses panic
• The power of “why” in content strategy, with a brilliant example from Apple
• And this week’s #YNTK: Reddit

We’ve Been Dying to Know This... and Facebook’s Q1 Gives Us the Data

Articles that claim they’ve decoded the algorithm and know exactly what to post, when to post and what to post are a dime a dozen. We’ve teamed up with an analytics company and have gained some insights that led to more hypotheses.

Under pressure to be more transparent, the social networks have started sharing more and more data. Here is what Facebook’s Q1 What People See on Facebook report says:

• Organic posts from pages you follow made up 15.7% of feed views in Q1
• 20.8% of views go to posts from groups
• 83.8% of content views went to posts with no links
• Of the top 20 most-viewed links, over 95MM views went to a website posting misleading. Facebook blocked the links, but it was too late as two of them sit at the top of the most-viewed links in Q1. “The people from this domain used spam tactics to mislead people and drive them to their website. Content with links to this domain can no longer be created on Facebook.”

The majority of the most-viewed posts on Facebook contained either a video, a photo, or text posts. They were related to entertainment and humor, similar to the prior Q4 2021 report. Of the top 20 posts:

• 16 were tall-format short videos (reels or TikTok style)
• 4 were text images
• 0 text posts were found in the top 20

What does this mean to you? For your business, get individuals (not pages) to share your tall-format short videos that are entertaining (or funny, or emo)

Instagram Is Testing A New Stories Display And People + Businesses Are Losing Their Minds

A small percentage of Instagram users have noticed a new view of Instagram Stories, where after 3 slides of a story the rest are collapsed. A tiny “snow all” appears in the upper left-hand corner and the user can tap this to see all stories from that one particular account.?

Social Media Today asked for additional info and IG responded:?

“This feature is in early development and testing with a very small percentage of people.”

LinkedIn Announces Business Manager to Come Later this Year

I got a tour of the upcoming features and while it may add some setup complexity, it also simplifies managing business properties and permissions.?

You can now put under one account all your brand-related pages, ad accounts, and audiences. You can connect partner accounts (such as agencies) to your business manager instead of giving individuals access to your properties. It’s safer and cleaner.?

Business Manager will be similar to Facebook’s equivalent feature, but a cleaner and simpler one by the looks of it.?

At a later date, LinkedIn will also introduce revenue attribution reporting, which I’m excited about. This will be done through a CRM connection, so if you don’t have one of them, or if your marketing and sales don’t talk to each other, now it’s the time to work on it so that you can take advantage of this feature. And even without this feature, you should do it anyway.?

The Power of Why In Developing Content Strategy that Converts

Since I started with the Kellogg Professional Certificate in Digital Marketing (PCDM) last year, I’ve had the chance to observe a large number of professionals practice developing strategies. Add that on top of the hundreds of businesses and marketing professionals I’ve worked with, and I’ve asked a lot of “whys” in my close to 20 years career.

So here’s one: Why do we not teach marketers to ask Why? And why don’t we make it safer for people to ask Why? Feel free to answer in the comments.

At PCDM, in one assignment the students have to create a content plan to address three of six prescribed needs, for Uber’s business traveler (just an example). Every.single.time the students choose Convenience as one of the customer's needs.?

You may look at that and say convenience is a legitimate business traveler need.?

My students are very very smart professionals. But when we are given a label and a task around that label, most people stick to the label.?

In my experience, convenience is just a convenient label. I mean, it is a lazy label. It is vague and too frequently quoted as value delivered.?

We cannot afford to be intellectually lazy if we want that ka-ching.?

I’m a fan of using the 5 Whys method, not just for problem-solving but also for a deeper understanding of what motivates people. And we can do this in two ways in our scenario:

1. Why do you think your target audience wants convenience? (it will help test your assumption and/or where it sits in the hierarchy of needs.?
2. Why DO they want convenience? Are they tired? Are they overwhelmed? Are they entitled? Are they lazy? Are they uncomfortable? Each one of those could identify deeper and contextual needs.?

Let’s take the example of Apple and its accessibility features.?

Message: Create your own. Built?in features designed for you to make something wonderful.

The solution: make it bold, make it big, make it clear, make it speak, make it listen, make it simple.?

Why do people want these accessibility solutions??

To make something wonderful.

They have cognitive features, they have vision features, hearing and mobility etc. When detailing these features Apple does use those terms. But for their primary message they went deeper than accessibility needs and found the need for making something wonderful.??

You can apply this method to identify the source of any problem. Here’s a marketing problem example:

In This Edition Of #YNTK: Reddit?

With this week’s awful mass shooting news, we learned that the shooter was getting his information mainly from 4chan and Reddit.?

Most people know of the 17-year-old Reddit, but what can it do for your business?

Reddit is a social sharing and discussion website in the forum category. Many consider Reddit a self-policed utilitarian democratic platform - you turn to Reddit for questions and answers, and the community decides via upvoting which answer or question they deem most valuable. And subreddit mods (moderators) manage these communities which makes it easier for Reddit to police illegal and harmful behavior. In 2021 41% of content removals were done by mods.?

According to Reddit’s 2021 Recap, the platform has seen a significant increase in activity in 2021:

• Reddit is home to more than 100,000 active communities (known as subreddits = forums) around the world;
• In 2021, redditors created 366 million posts, a 19% increase YoY;
• As of November 9, 2021, we’ve seen 2.3 billion total comments, a 12% increase YoY, and 46 billion total upvotes, a 1% increase YoY.

While on other social networks the “currency” is views (as you saw from Facebook’s example), on Reddit we have comments and upvotes as indicators of engagement.?

I've been wondering why most brand listening tools don’t include Reddit, although we consistently find brand mentions and relevant conversations on the platform. And when someone mentions your brand on Reddit, you’d better be there because Reddit’s impact on brand reputation packs a punch due to its evergreen nature.?

Here are potential uses for brands:

• Monitor and research interests, moods and motivators
• Respond to comments and questions about your brand - mods may or may not allow this but often if you ask them kindly and try to develop a relationship with them via which you’re transparent about your intentions, they may allow it and more. See our case study linked below.
• Dot AMAs (ask me anything). We did this with a Refractive Surgeon with incredible participation where it took 24 hours post-event to answer all questions. Bill Gates just did his 10th AMA yesterday. His AMAs have been in the top 3 most commented threads in recent history.?
• Create your own subreddit. But make it about useful stuff. You will get crushed if you won’t be interesting and have a sense of humor
• Run advertising

Over the years, we’ve done quite a bit of Reddit marketing and you can read a case study here.?

If you'd like to watch the video, here it is:

Got thoughts? Drop them in the comments :)?