Are the Kardashians shaping the future of Social Media Marketing? 

Image Credit: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

If you are interested in social media or digital marketing, you would have probably seen many headlines talking about the end of Instagram and Kylie Jenner, but why?

This year Meta (Instagram and Facebook's parent company) decided to start placing content from people you don't follow into the feed, which is tanking engagement on business pages, showing irrelevant ads to users and de-prioritising your friend's posts. While many people are unhappy with this change, it's all coming from Meta's fear that you enjoy using TikTok more than Instagram.

You see, Instagram is built on the foundation of following people and businesses you are interested in to stay up to date, while new social sites like Tiktok are all algorithmic. While you can still follow people, TikTok learns your behaviours and feeds you content based on your preferences. This increases engagement and satisfaction with the app, which keeps users on for longer.

Two weeks ago, Kyle Jenner & Kim Kardashian shared a post to their story that said 'Make Instagram Instagram Again', protesting the platforms change to the algorithm. This caught the media's attention worldwide as almost 700 Million users saw the post. While they haven't said why they shared it, we have two theories.

1. Like many of us, they are frustrated by the platform changes.

2. They make millions yearly sharing Sponsored posts that fewer people now see. 

Why is his important?

It may seem strange to write about this, but we have a history of Kylie Jenner shaping the future of social media platforms.

In February 2018, Kyle posted a single tweet that wiped 1.3 Billion from Snapchat's market value; the tweet simply said, "Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me.. uh this is so sad".

At the time, Snapchat had created a new UI design that iOS users declared 'frustrating' and difficult to understand. It was also less than 12 months after Instagram had ripped off Snaps' stories' feature and was seeing great success.

As you can imagine, Snap Inc didn't like this and quickly reversed the changes that had been made to the iOS app.

This tweet cost Snap Inc $1.3 Billion

History repeating?

This time, the women have gone up against the social media behemoth Meta; while I am sure it was an innocent post share like everyone else who shared it, people of their power and influence in society can make companies rethink their strategy.

Within hours, Meta has said that not only are they not changing the 'social feed' back to how it was last year, but they will also continue prioritising Video and up the algorithmic content in your feed from 15% to 30%. As you can imagine, now, with the world watching and tech blogs ready to pounce, this didn't go over well.

Within 24 hours, Instagram Head Adam Mosseri took to Twitter (again) to announce a u-turn; he said they 'hear you' and will pivot to show more of your friend's content on the feed and double down on making sure photo sharing stays a core priority for Instagram.

The Instagram Problem

Why did they change course? That's simple, the company (while still massively influential and powerful) is beginning to see profit and revenue drop, and users are spending less time on their apps in favour of TikTok.

Meta is under attack from multiple fronts, with Apple restricting how iPhone users are tracked (which has cost Facebook $10 Billion in lost ad revenue), Politicians cracking down on false information by enforcing regulations, users tiring of the platform, and investors not believing in the MetaVerse.

The good news is that returning to the old feed will help companies reach their target audience and hopefully return engagement on the platform to what it was before they changed the feed through both organic and paid marketing.

You have Kim & Kylie to thank for that.

It's an interesting position Meta is in, and we will be sure to keep you updated with news that could impact your business's Digital Marketing Strategy.

Editorial, Insights, MarketingWilliam Nivenmarketing