Social media platforms are constantly searching for the elusive advertising balance that keeps users, influencers and brands happy. Recently, several social media sites have made major changes that will significantly impact influencers and their brand partners. Take a look below to learn how your company can make the best use of these changes!
YouTube
The Change: YouTube is tightening regulations regarding who can monetize content in hopes of keeping the site a safe and attractive platform for influencers, brands and advertisers. Effective Feb. 20, creators must have garnered 4,000 hours of watch time on their channel in the past year and have at least 1,000 subscribers to qualify for monetization. This rule impacts channels applying to the YouTube Partner Program and those already in the program.
YouTube addressed the change in a post and explained that the new rules are meant to reward creators who make engaging content while preventing “bad actors” from monetizing inappropriate content. YouTube says that the vast majority of channels in the YouTube Partner Program will not be affected.
In the same blog post, YouTube announced two additional changes. Now, when determining eligibility for monetization, YouTube will take in to account channel size, audience engagement and creator behavior. Additionally, YouTube will change the algorithms of the Google Preferred content to reflect not only the most popular videos but also the most vetted.
What This Means for Brands: If your brand has a current channel with less than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 total watch hours, you will lose your ability to monetize your channel. Brands should focus on consistent, quality videos that attract subscribers rather than attention grabbing, flash-in-the-pan content. YouTube’s new rules show that the platform values transparency and rewards consistent, long-term content creators.
Snapchat
The Change: Snapchat is allowing their most popular creators– verified users with “official stories”– access to an array of metrics, including: total story views in the past week, month and year; daily unique story viewers and average time unique viewers spent watching including completion rates; audience demographics and audience interests. Snapchat has been a notoriously difficult platform to measure reach and engagement, which has made it difficult for brands to measure the success of their Instagram influencers partnerships.
What this Means for Brands: New analytic information could help brands secure more effective sponsorship deals with the right influencers. Brands can help influencers refine their content to appeal to target audiences. Brands can also measure engagement on Instagram against engagement on other social media platforms.
The Change: In an effort to more accurately gauge the effectiveness of organic posts, Facebook now measures organic posts with the same methodology used for promoted posts. Historically, Facebook measured organic posts by how many times that content was delivered to a News Feed, while promoted posts only count if they entered a user’s screen. Facebook announced the change in a recent post. The changes went in to effect on Feb. 12.
In addition to updating reach measurement, Facebook also announced that they are redesigning Page Insights, making important information easier to find by moving the most commonly used metrics to the top. The new top-page metrics include general page diagnostics, including number of likes, reach and engagement; results of actions recently taken, such as a recent post performance; and the preview of new Page engagement, such as new followers demographics.
What This Means for Brands: Though business pages will now have more precise reporting, Facebook points out that an unintended consequence could be a lower number of views. Facebook is offering side-by-side comparisons between the old version and the new for the next few months.
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