Messaging is slowly replacing the Social Feed, which was the thing back in the day. More users now want to share updates through more intimate circles within DMs, as opposed to posting to their main, public stream. A key reason behind this is the divisive nature of conversations within social apps, with more political and topical discussion leading to arguments, which often cause more angst than they’re worth.
The Next Exodus
You’ve likely personally experienced this before – how many times have you felt the urge to post something, started typing it out, only to end up saying that it’s not worth it? You might have an opinion on the issue of the day, but is that strong enough to defend your position if you get challenged? Do you really want to wade into an argument with a bunch of randoms in the comments?
Most people don’t. This then pushes more people toward more private sharing. Because most people simply had enough of the back and forth that comes with public posting. That’s now leading to a significant shift in the focus of the main social apps. Meta, in particular, has seen a big shift towards engagement within messaging and is now leaning into this, with new additions like Instagram ‘Channels’, which is basically broadcast messaging.
This shift could have a big impact on the way that people interact across Facebook and Instagram. Meanwhile, Instagram’s also experimenting with enhanced sharing options in DMs, such as highlighting previously shared posts within your inbox. The implications of such aren’t entirely clear just yet, as people are still discovering content on Facebook and Instagram, but are sharing what they find in messages. That suggests that social Feeds remain a solid option for increasing audience reach. However, brands may want to consider incorporating DMs as a means to provide more ways for customers to message them directly in interactions, as opposed to direct in-app engagement.
All these changes might also skew your metrics. As Meta makes a bigger push on DM interaction, that will inevitably have some impact on post engagement, as people will be increasingly sharing in private instead of commenting. Soon enough, gone will be the days where you see people tagging others in comments, opting to forward links through a private message instead.
Such a shift would likely cause a decline in your page engagement, while people seeing it through a message will be less likely to click through for further context since they’ll see the full link preview within the messaging thread. Before, people had to visit brand pages to understand the tag, but now, with message preview links, that has been significantly altered, potentially masking the full impact of your Facebook and Instagram reach.
The Wrap
How do you measure it, then? It depends on your focus goals, but click-throughs and page visits will likely become more critical indicators, along with conversions and other metrics. It could well be that you end up generating a heap of messaging conversions, which would be confusing to track in the beginning, compared to traditional metrics. This is the way Meta’s currently headed, with other platforms not too far behind in following suit.
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