Social Media Algorithms Are Changing How We See Creativity
No, this is not just a blog written by a millennial who does not accept the recent changes going on on Instagram. This is a frank text from someone who has worked with social media for the last 10 years (literally before it was cool) and has seen how all these changes have been affecting not only the market but also our cultural behaviours on a much larger scale.
It's not about a post getting poor reach. It's about many people’s main sources of inspiration and creativity becoming completely shallow.
It makes me feel old to say 'back in the day, the internet used to be different...', but the truth is that in the past, no one knew very well about how each social media works. It was all very organic and easy to navigate. No wonder, social media became big. We started to find our communities by following people and brands we liked and choosing the channels that better helped us to express ourselves (*RIP MySpace or Snapchat*).
However, the internet has become a combination of poor clickbait on our emails, lots of similar “this is how I got 100000 views in 1 day” posts sharing the same “secrets” on Linkedin, and don’t even get me started on Instagram, which has become a worse version of TikTok…
Forget about your photos. If you want to be noticed by the Instagram algorithm, apparently, you must use the audios that everyone else is using and edit your video following a template. Anything that differentiates from what other people are doing can make you flop.
On top of the frustration around these constant changes and uncertainty, how does this impact our market?
Communication and Marketing are about creativity. About telling stories in a different, yet relatable way, to generate new emotions. Good marketing campaigns were those created from unique ideas. And social media seems to be taking a different approach.
We’re still able to innovate in offline media, whether via paid marketing or PR, but the point is precisely that social networks were created from this idea of making this ‘Creative world’ more inclusive and accessible. And so it went for a long time until the 'social' in ‘social media’ lost its meaning.
I’m not saying we should stop using algorithms and go back to the offline era - but in my opinion, every network is about people, and fully automating the interaction between people doesn’t seem quite right.
As marketing experts, we still follow the trends to ensure we’re delivering good results in terms of metrics - followers, reach and engagement rates, etc. But I do wish there was a “human perception” metric on our dashboards, to measure the impact that brands really have on people.
Conversion is about connection. After all the numbers, your consumer is still a human being. And how you make them feel is the best metric to analyse.
Before I finish, make sure you follow us on Instagram so we’ll never need to dance on Reels to grow our audience ;)
