But gradually year after year, Facebook would update its news feed algorithm in ways that made it harder for brands to connect with consumers without paying to advertise. In June 2016, Facebook announced that it planned to make even more changes to its algorithm so that it would boost content posted by the friends and family of users over publishers and brands. By the end of the month, reach of brand and publisher stories had dropped 42%. This was all done to improve the site’s revenue model, but has essentially resulted in Facebook switching from an owned to paid media channel.

The lesson here is that regardless of how people use social media, brands will always be at the mercy of the algorithms and changes of the channel. In an interview with The New York Times, Emily Bell, Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said,

“There is now an expectation, in general, on the part of publishers that platforms will change, and that they won’t necessarily be informed how they will change.”

Therefore, in order to completely own the customer experience, brands should rely on owned media channels that allow them to control their reach and message.

Retaining Your Brand Identity on Social Media



Well, we know that customers will pay a premium for brands they trust or simply will be more willing to spend their hard-earned money with a strong brand. But while social media offers an opportunity to extend the reach of a brand message, it also presents great risks through that extension.

AdAge asked these same questions in the (relatively) early days of social media in the article “What’s Your Brand’s Social ID?” where they identify social media as presenting an “emerging crisis of brand identity”. The answer is that brands have a compelling need:

…to communicate who you are as a brand and what you stand for through social media in a far more consistent, strategic and global way.

While this sounds very much like the common definition for Integrated Marketing Communications, the author is suggesting that we need to go farther and deeper in coordinating marketing plans.

In the FastCompany post “How to Measure Brand Value: Likes, Followers, Influencers, Views? No, Social Currency” the author talks about a recent study on brand valuation conducted by Vivaldi partners in conjunction with MIT called Brand Social Currency. They show how brands with high loyalty and strong social currency command a price premium confirming the need for the tighter coordination of social brand activities.

But, it further states that brand advocates are more important than simply measuring followers and that not all brands will see an improvement in their value through social media. The reason: because putting social messaging into the proper context is important. In simpler words, a brand’s social activities need to help your prospects with something that is relevant to your brand.

I think this quote in the article from Erich Joachimsthaler, Founder and CEO of Vivaldi Partners sums it up well:

“Brand Social Currency is not about social media, not about buzz, not about tactics. It is so much bigger. It gets to a brand’s long-term sustainability. It’s about how customers relate to one another in the context of brands and how those brands, companies, products and people relate to customers … It’s an experiential, holistic concept that we have deconstructed and reconstructed to map to brand value.”

And there you have it: whether you call it “experiential branding” or “relational branding” as a colleague recently explained it to me, it is important to understand that we are no longer (if ever) in control.

In the end I think it comes down to what another colleague of mine called “Brand Enablement:” we should accept our role as brand stewards, accept that our brands live in the minds of the consumers and allow the process of co-creation to evolve. It doesn’t mean we can’t orchestrate the movement. In fact, we will likely work much harder but with greater and more rewarding outcomes.