Today I’m talking about big news from Facebook and Instagram. They are banning certain types of ‘branded content’ from their platform.
This is massive news for influencers and high-profile pages.
Tt’s also massive news for those of us who pay influencers to promote our content.
So if you are using influencers as a traffic source this affects you directly.
But first, what is branded content?
What is branded content anyway?
I know it’s a bit of a strange term and one that is open to interpretation.
And maybe thats one of the reasons why Facebook and Instagram are tightening things up.
Branded content is content that a brand pays a publisher to promote.
So for example if I write an article or shoot a video then I can pay an influencer to share that with their audience.
Brands have figured out that they can just pay influencers to link directly to products and sidestep the content creation aspect of promotion.
So for that reason Facebook and Instagram are updating their policy to read:
Don’t accept anything of value to post content that you did not create or were not involved in the creation of, or that does not feature you. – Facebook Policy
And there we have it in black and white.
These changes are going to take effect in March, 2018.
You haven’t got long to diversify or come up with a new strategy on the monetization of your pages or rethink the content that you are creating and publishing through influencer networks.
If publishers continue to violate this new policy they will be restricted from using Facebook’s monetization tools.
So they’re gonna hit you where it hurts.
But what’s the bigger picture and what does this really mean?
The bigger picture
As I’ve been predicting for some time now, the focus of online marketers really needs to shift to creating high quality content.
If you are not creating your own content at the moment you need to reconsider that.
This is something that will become increasingly important to you if you want to stay relevant in your marketplaces.
But thankfully I have a little shortcut for you that will work in the immediate future regarding this new policy update.
‘High quality content’ can actually be as little as having an original quote inside the content that is being promoted.
So if you are a brand seeking promotion from an influencer just make sure that they are involved in some way in the creation of that content.
At the very least have a high quality original quote from them.
Likewise if you are an influencer make sure that you have your stamp in every single piece of content that you promote.
So that’s a quick shortcut that you can use to make life a little bit easier for you when things change in March.
If you found this useful then share this with people who might benefit from it too.