More and more marketers worldwide are wrapping their heads around the current status of social media assets brands are investing in and whether in-house creatives are meeting their company’s conversion and acquisition targets.

There’s an increased concern that content strategy is not well calibrated to exploit the hyper competitive social media acquisition channel- with many pointing at the organic reach demise as the ultimate reason brands are encountering extremely high costs of acquisition in the social sphere.

Wait! What is organic reach and why is it declining?

Let’s turn academic: organic reach is commonly referred to as the number of people seeing one’s content under a free distribution scheme. In other words, your organic reach equals the total number of people you show your content to for free - In the case of Facebook, by simply popping up in their news feed.

A sharp decline of organic reach has been reported for some time now and was first eyed in 2012, when more and more brands started to notice a cap of 16% to their organic reach rate over total followers count on Facebook. Since then, the decline in organic reach has reportedly been going down to as low as 2% for some major pages - with some experts forecasting it to approach 0 as competitions for space in users’ feed continues to heat up. This has added further confirming evidence to the theory that organic reach approaches zero as followers count increases.

Wait but...why is organic reach declining?

Sigh no more, there seem to be two main reasons:

1. Billions of pieces of content are being published on Facebook every month, at a pace that is presumably much faster than user growth. Simply put, the users’ newsfeed space is shrinking and competition for content is going up. Fast.

2. News feed algorithm is adaptive and tailored to users interests. Relevance to users matters a lot in predicting whether your content will show up or not.

Here is a picture of organic reach for major brands pages, posted in a recent article about the demise of organic reach in the Facebook space.

Looks bad, right?
Additionally, some studies have shown that not only fewer people are actually seeing your post, but the lifespan of the post itself is shrinking dramatically.

What are the consequences of the demise of organic reach for a brand and its content marketing strategy?

• You’re probably wasting resources.

Unless well equipped with extremely captivating, expensive content - especially in the form of photo and videos format - your Brand is more likely to be wasting time and energy on content that will hardly reach anyone for free. Competition for attention is huge!

• Paid media through traditional ads is getting expensive!

Given organic media generally poor performance, Brands are turning to paid boosts and promotion to reach an additional audience. For this reason, competition for promotional space is also heating up. Media values like CPM and CPC are climbing across all industries.

So this is it? Should I just give up and not publish anything at all? Fear not, as you can now easily invest in influencer-generated content.

78% of marketers worldwide are believed to be planning to launch at least one influencer marketing campaign in 2017. Reasons are pretty simple: influencers-distributed content is believed to drive as much as 11 times the return on investment as compared to branded content delivered through traditional digital ads (don't you believe it? Check out our guide to Social Influencer Marketing ROI). At a first glance, the difference lies in the prominence, authority and influence of the content originators with respect to the audience involved. 

Traditionally, brands have been increasingly relying on content distributed by influencers as an alternative to traditional paid media because of proven higher conversion rate and lower acquisition cost. In other words, because they see it as a cheaper, more effective form of paid advertising - a more effective distribution channel!

Indeed, partnering up with influencers can be seen as a way to gain access to highly engaged audiences that are similar to the one that’s organically viewing your content.

You brand creates the content, influencers share it effectively. This is what agencies and influencers usually sell as an asset to marketers. But this is not the whole story.

“Influencers are masters in creating content that’s engaging and appealing to their audiences”

As of recently, more advertisers are starting to reach out to influencers as part of their strategy to outsource content creation to experienced creators: in other words, to supplement existing content assets with high performing media they will then distribute organically - through their Facebook page, to boost organic reach.

Why should a brand outsource branded content creation to influencers ?

The reason is clear: Influencers are masters in creating content that’s engaging and appealing to their audiences. Working with them means investing in high value-added, engaging content that has the potential to boost Brand’s aggregate organic reach of all existing assets - furthermore, this content will remain at your complete disposal!

More and more brands are sharing influencer-generated content on their pages together with influencers. By mentioning the influencers and using proper hashtags it’s possible to gain great visibility on your page with very low efforts.

Below a few tips to maximize the return on your investment when executing and influencer marketing campaign that aims at generating great content for your brand:

• Always consider influencer marketing as a source of great content, not only a distribution channel

• Make sure you’re granted with full ownership of the content you’re paying for

• Share original content on your own social media channels, by mentioning the influencers and using proper hashtags.

At Hoopygang, we work hard to make sure your brand takes full advantage of the content created by our network of influencers. This is why we created our media planning arm: because we believe that distribution and creation work best in tandem and that your marketing efforts should always pay off.

If you are interested in discovering the potential of the social influencer marketing, you want to start a program with our media company or you are simply curious, do not hesitate to contact us by clicking below.