The news? Perhaps you already know, but Facebook is considering monetizing posts in a different way – one that would make post authors benefit from their own content (or from their proprietary content).
The source? The Verge found out that this move is rather close via a user survey distributed mid-April 2016, which asked users to manifest their interest in several possible future upgrades to the well-known social network. Among them there was a call-to-action button, a donation facilitator (a tip jar) element and a sponsor marketplace.
The angle? Facebook would be sharing its marketing revenue with individual users this way. It seems that the company is testing various sustainable, long-term methods for their partners, and this survey and its hints are on the line of Instant Articles, another recently announced feature.
The continuity element
These changes might go unnoticed by less experienced eyes or by people who do not preoccupy themselves with the latest in digital marketing, online platform improvements or social networks.
After all, Facebook is perceived as a classic business model fueled by user-generated content. The accounts are free, the customization options allow choosing exactly how much visibility and privacy the user desires for its posts, and the advertising mechanisms developed over time, bringing more and more revenues for the social network.
In fact, when looking at its earnings reports (here Washington Post made a few considerations based on the company’s 2015 Q4 report), Facebook registered an increase in both the sums brought in by its mobile advertising (from 69 percent at the end of 2014 to 80 percent one year later), as well as in its users’ number (here the growth qualifies as “spectacular” with a whole 14 percent higher compared to the situation registered at the same time during the previous year).
The continuity element is obvious – this social network keeps the pace with all that socializing means as time goes by, and it’s reflecting trends or even creating them, all the while furnishing its environment with all the necessary tools to facilitate and encourage advertising. When looking at the big picture, the idea of monetizing posts seems a truism. Just that this time the company seemingly wants to let users earn money from their posts, which is a tiny yet full of potential nugget of novelty.
The innovative element
As we already mentioned, letting users monetize their work would be an innovation for Facebook, if they go through with this strategy. This would take the social network to a new competition field, where they would go up against a blogging model that took up the in-platform subscriptions as well as the sponsored content models in order to facilitate the way writers earn their money and bring more dynamism and speed to the entire process.
Since on a standalone blog platform clients usually open accounts or connect mainly for the professional activity and secondly for socializing, the reverse equation which describes Facebook (main activity: presence and socializing, secondary activity: professional research or activities), makes opportunities flourish for marketers or future paid authors. The audience is already there, all that remains to be done is attract their attention. The huge number of users registered by Facebook shows an excellent strategy deployed on a longer period of time – willingly or not.
First, the customers connected out of curiosity, fun, or out of the need to reconnect online with their real-life peers or friends. Next, the users formed clusters, groups, created pages and made other users gravitate around them. The network grew while its creators slowly induced or made available new shapes and directions in which these smaller or larger online communities could evolve.
Now Facebook has a standalone power and represents a mesmerizing attraction for every digital marketer and brand, because it is intertwined with advertising, yet it did not grow directly out of it.
Giving the authors the power to set some direct revenue mechanisms within the networks is indeed a novelty element and it should be very interesting to see how it pans out. Because if we are to judge by the way other Facebook strategy moves turned out to attract even more users, businesses and fame, it is sure this new element should be highly effective.
Facebook upgrade or transformation?
Giving individuals the power to make money via the social network raises one question – will they know how to make proper use of it?
As we already mentioned, because of its unique characteristics, marketing on Facebook is like setting up a home presentation for your product and/or services. The people are already there, they just have to agree to listen and watch your advertising. On the other hand, there are fine lines that should be respected – have you noticed how Facebook allows users to dismiss adverts and has a mini-survey attached to this option? The adverts in general do not go away, but that particular one rejected by a certain user does not come back, because the network also wants to retain its people. The network, in fact, is its people. They might not go away all at one, if they are upset or hassled, but there are mass dynamics that explain how trends appear and evolve, and there is also a tipping point where too many disgruntled customers might just form a leaving-the-network trend.
Well, perhaps the above example is a bit exaggerated – but there is a point to it. When individuals will be the ones deciding on how to interact with their paying Facebook visitors, many will thrive, while many will fail. Most of these authors will not have the benefit of analytics and the knowledge of customer psychology or mass dynamics – their individual skills in this direction and their intuition, as well as the content quality will have to be the match for what looks in professional advertising like a complex machinery.
Will Facebook register an interesting upgrade once the power, as well as the weaknesses and the natural inspiration and intuition of individual writers would be unleashed, and motivated by the temptation of earning, or will its entire dynamics flip in an unknown direction? It remains to be seen, if and when they will decide to implement this rumored plan.
