No more free gifts on social media

In our weekly look at what content marketing-related stories are gaining traction on social media, the spotlight fell on distribution and content effectiveness.

Pay up to push your content

AdWeek asked for marketer and agency responses to recent changes in Instagram’s algorithm that are likely to increase the move to paid content distribution.

Titled The end of free, it looks at how Instagram is following its parent company Facebook in a move to push content based on what it thinks the user wants to see. As with Facebook’s Newsfeed, the only sure way to beat this is by paid promotion.

The general feeling is that free distribution was good while it lasted, but that content marketing could soon lose out.

Says one exec: “Don’t kid yourself. Even if you have unbelievable content, you could still find yourself in a if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods-and-nobody-is-around moment.”

Incidentally, the story received 452, 333 and 654 shares on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter respectively.

Content marketing from tech companies

The US Content Marketing Institute (CMI) has brought out research showing how tech companies have been using – and faring with – content marketing.

According to the CMI, tech is the greatest user of the medium, popular with around 95 per cent of those questioned. However, organisations face a series of unique challenges, such as producing content for more complicated products and different types of customer.

On the downside, respondents reported that content marketing was less effective than last year. This despite more of them adopting a content marketing strategy.

Perhaps a sign of the times – especially considering the top story of this post – is that paid distribution was seen as being increasingly successful.

This story received 146, 327, 642 shares on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Pushing your content marketing out there is part of Content24, the online magazine for London content marketing agency FirstWord.