How Meta's Announcement May Impact Marketing

Meta has recently made waves with announcements that could reshape the landscape of Facebook & Instagram marketing. As these platforms evolve, understanding how these changes impact your social media marketing efforts is crucial to maintaining effectiveness. With new features, policies, and a shift in user engagement patterns on the horizon, most businesses are left wondering how to adapt their strategies accordingly. 

The impact of Meta's changes on Facebook and Instagram

Meta has announced a handful of significant changes that each have implications when it comes to an effective social media strategy.

1. Decreasing Content Moderation: Fact-checking has been at the cornerstone of Meta's efforts to combat fake news and misinformation. Removing fact-checking efforts will lead to an increase in misinformation on all Meta platforms. This announcement has already negatively impacted user trust (with searches for how to delete accounts seeing a surge after the announcement). Additionally, the lack of fact-checking on Meta can potentially harm brands marketing via Meta as they may be associated with problematic content if their social ads or posts appear next to misleading or harmful information. Lastly, this change means that Influencer Marketing should also undergo more scrutiny. It is more important than ever for businesses who are partnering with Influencers to ensure that the Influencer does not promote or participate in any misleading or harmful content.
2. Updating their Hateful Conduct Policy: With a handful of changes to what is considered hateful conduct, Meta has removed several restrictions on speech, which will now allow for more conversation within the platform around divisive topics. It also removes previous protections for discussions around race, ethnicity, and gender identity. This change has also caused several people to leave the platform entirely. Because these updates touch on issues that are known to cause division, it is likely that businesses with a strong ethos related to any of these issues will need to decide if they want to continue to be affiliated with Meta. Because Meta ad products have historically been very effective (with over 10 million advertisers on the platform), it may be difficult for a business to move off the platform entirely. Still, given the shift in user trust on the platform, it would, at a minimum, be worth diversifying the platforms where you are advertising.
3. Putting an end to DEI initiatives: Although these changes are more focused on Meta's internal corporate practices, they do indicate a shift in the way Meta is approaching the landscape. This particular announcement has led to several Meta employees speaking out against the company. Several changes within Meta will likely yield even more changes to the platform itself. So, this is something to be mindful of when investing in marketing efforts with Meta.

Adapting Your Marketing Strategies to Meta's Changes

As with all marketing strategies, experimentation will be crucial at a time like this. At this stage, changes to Meta and the changes in public sentiment toward Meta are evolving.

My advice would be to review your target audience and assess what you believe their sentiment toward Meta would be. If your target audience will move away from Meta products, shift some of your marketing investment to other platforms to diversify your efforts. Stay on top of the coverage for this (from as unbiased of sources as possible), and be prepared to adapt your strategy on the fly based on the latest updates. We'll continue to cover this (and other major updates to social platforms) as it evolves.