Is Your Brand Ready For “Demetrication?”

When the likes, retweets and video views run dry, what’s a brand to do? Many brands look to their influencers and their own engagement metrics to understand how its social media content and campaigns are resonating with its target audience. However, with Instagram and Twitter beginning to test out removing these metrics from the public eye, it may be time to rethink your brand’s social media strategy.

What is demetrication?

During the 2019 F8 Conference, Facebook’s annual developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg teased the idea of removing likes and video views from being publicly displayed on Instagram, otherwise known as demetrication. This update would be part of an attempt to curb the negative impacts social media, and in this case Instagram, is having on mental health. By encouraging users to focus less on feedback they receive and more on the content they post, Instagram hopes to create “a less pressurized environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves.”

Users will still have the ability to see the number of likes they receive on the images and videos they post; however, they will no longer be able to compare their likes to other users.

What does this mean for brands?

The removal of publicly visible likes and video view metrics may seem like red alert for influencers and brands who make money off these metrics and use these metrics to measure success and base rates, but there are other ways to show off the value of your social media efforts, including:

• Running Facebook Ads

Direct your time and budget towards increasing, or starting, your Facebook ad spend. Running ads and promoting organic Facebook and Instagram content through Facebook’s Ad Manager allows you to optimize your ad spend towards bottom of the funnel business objectives. These optimizations could include conversions and store visits.

Facebook Advertising also offers a deep level of location, behavior, demographic and interest-based targeting which can help your brand’s content reach your target audience. The Facebook Pixel also provides Facebook advertisers with effective re-targeting abilities.

• Fine-tuning Influencer Strategies

If you are already running influencer campaigns make sure that you are providing your influencers with content that has a clear call to action and incorporates a working link to a landing page on your site. Using your influencers to drive web traffic, rather than to rack up likes and video views can take your influencer’s audience past awareness and further down the business funnel.

• Shifting Metric Goals

As vanity metrics such as likes, video views and impressions are being tossed to the way side, set your brand’s goals on more actionable metrics. Setting goals based on website traffic, newsletter sign-ups, and reach can focus your brand’s social media strategy on more meaningful metrics.

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