Welcome to Edition No. 11 of my weekly digital strategy newsletter, providing practical analysis of the latest in the world of content creation.
Contents
I. News: Instagram Updates That Are Good for Original Content
II. Analysis: More Than Half of Full-Time Creators Don’t Make a Living Wage
III. Tip: Getting To Know GA4 Events, Parameters
News
INSTAGRAM RANKING CHANGE: ORIGINALITY OVER REPOSTING
Instagram has changed a component of its algorithm to favor original content over reposts.
"If you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you are resharing something that you found from someone else,” Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said on a Twitter video. “We're going to do more to try and value original content more, particularly compared to reposted content."
While we don’t know the technical details of this change, it’s great news for original content creators and will hopefully help them rise above copycats and get-views-quick snake oil salesmen.
Another way to look at this change? If you simply download your TikToks and upload them to Instagram as Reels, that’s probably going to hurt your feed ranking.
One caveat arose in a follow-up response from Mosseri to a user’s question: Instagram can’t determine the original content creator with 100 percent certainty:
“We can’t know for sure. We build classifiers to predict how *likely* something is to be original, but that’s not knowing. We look at things like who’s in the video, and if we’ve seen the video before.”
🛠 Why does this matter? It’s more important than ever to create original content that’s tailored to each particular platform.
Invest in a video editor – or use a free one like iMovie – that allows you to export vertical videos. That way you can upload your original file to Instagram and TikTok, respectively, and use the particular add-ons that each platform offers.
If you merely save a post from one platform and upload it to another, you’re unlikely to get as many views.
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INSTAGRAM PRODUCT TAGS FOR ALL
Mosseri also announced in the same video that all users will now be able to tag products, or “shopping tags,” in their posts.
This means that anyone can tag products from other users’ shops, not just their own.
🛠 Why does this matter?
Journalist scenario: A news website sets up a shop on its profile featuring subscriptions (and perhaps swag) as products. Now, every time a reporter or photographer (or whomever) shares a post related to their work, they can also promote the relevant subscription or other product in their post.
Retail scenario: A company sets up a shop on its Instagram profile. Employees who want to promote their company’s products – especially those they had a hand in creating – can now tag them in posts on their personal profile, expanding the company’s owned network.
At the moment this feature is only available in the U.S.
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GOOGLE IS TESTING A CHANGE TO ‘FEATURED SNIPPETS’
A featured snippet is Google’s way of trying to give you an answer to a query without necessarily having to click through, while still giving you a link to the source.
Here’s how a standard featured snipped currently appears:
The answer to my query is plain as day on the SERP, but if I want more details, I can click through to the Penn State website.
Now, in tests shared on Twitter, we’re seeing two featured snippet experiments.
One is in the same format as linked above, except that below the first result, the “Other sites say” option provides additional sources.
The other experiment, a “From the web” section, is more similar to the “Other sites say” feature, but without the main featured snippet at the very top.
🛠 Why does this matter? This is good news if you’re having trouble breaking into the featured snippet section. If additional featured snippet slots open, you could have more opportunities to drive traffic to your site.
This could be concerning news if you already own that top (lone) spot for a featured snippet. You’re now likely to face some additional competition for clicks.
In the end, the user probably benefits most by having multiple, but still limited options to answer their query.
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RECENT TAB OF INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS GOING AWAY?
“A small group” of users won’t see the “recent” tab on Instagram hashtag pages as part of a test announced Tuesday.
🛠 Why does this matter? This could help combat users who try to highjack hashtag pages with quick-hit, viral-thirsty posts, since it takes time and consistent engagement to become a “top” post for a particular hashtag.
On the other hand, super recent updates may take more time to break into the “Top” posts tab.
ADS COMING TO REELS
If the sponsored Reels in these screenshots look familiar, it’s because they’re similar to the format TikTok employs.
🛠 Why does this matter? Users now have more incentive to create Reels, Instagram’s darling product of the moment. Not only are your organic posts more likely to show up in someone’s feed if they’re Reels, but now you could make money from them, too.
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EDITED TWEETS WILL PROBABLY COME WITH AN EDIT HISTORY
Users selected as part of Twitter’s edit-button test have begun sharing sneak peaks of the impending feature.
🛠 Why does this matter? One of the biggest concerns about a tweet-edit button was that users would be able to “erase” their mistakes without leaving any trail, or worse, bait-and-switch other users who replied to or retweeted them.
Now it appears that not only will edited tweets be marked as such, but a “new” tweet of sorts could be attached to the original, along with a change log.
Although I would still vote against having an edit button at all, this transparency is a big win for news organizations, and more generally, people who care about the truth and holding others accountable.
Analysis
MOST FULL-TIME CREATORS DON’T MAKE MUCH MONEY
There are 200 million global social media users who consider themselves creators, according to the Linktree 2022 Creator Report.
Creator Followings
Of those 200 million, 1 percent are considered “Expert” – 100,000–1 million followers – and another 1 percent (the top percentile) are “Expert+” – more than 1 million followers.
The biggest category is “Semi-Pro,” with 139 million people with between 1,000–10,000 followers.
A pause here: I strongly oppose to categorizing someone’s expertise based on follower count. Give me an influencer with 100,000 super-engaged followers over a 2-million-follower account that has low engagement and creates unoriginal content.
The former will continue growing and have a much more loyal audience, while the latter will be more prone to drop-offs every time there’s a new trend or algorithm update.
Time Spent Creating
Sixty-six percent of the 200 million creators are doing this “part-time,” while 43 percent spend less than 5 hours per week creating content. “Creator,” then, is a broadly encompassing title.
Creator Income
Time spent doesn’t always correlate with income level. More than half of creators who make between $50,000–100,000 per year spend less than 10 hours a week on content creation.
How could that be? The report doesn’t say, but I’ll venture a guess: A significant chunk of those making $50,000–100,000 per year in less than 10 hours per week have built up their influence, and can command a much higher price, therefore needing to create less content to make more money.
Don’t Quit Your Day Job
Nearly half (46 percent) of “full-time creators” make less than $1,000 a year, and only 12 percent make more than $50,000.
Stay Focused
Your chances of making money increase substantially based on how narrow your subject focus, Linktree data shows. For example, 10 percent of niche channels earn revenue via e-courses and paid downloadable resources, respectively, while only 3 percent of non-niche channels make money on the former product and 5 percent on the latter.
This report can inspire and sober at the same time.
The pandemic was responsible for an explosion of online entrepreneurship, though it’s the success stories that are most likely to make headlines. i.e. Kat “Miss Excel” Norton, who routinely makes thousands of dollars a day selling Excel tutorials.
You see a story like that, where someone actually did quit their day job to strike out on their own, and you can think that this whole making-money-online thing comes easy.
That’s why it’s important to douse ourselves with buckets of cold water (i.e. hard data) once in a while. Such as that stat that 46 percent of full-time creators – in an entire year, before taxes – don’t make the equivalent of one month’s rent in most major cities.
If you can afford to burn the ship to start what you hope to be a long-term, sustainable income, more power to you. Otherwise, the smarter route is probably to build your following little by little while relying on a more traditional source of income.
Who’s your favorite creator? Let me know below in the comments.
Weekly Tip
Google Analytics 4 Events and Parameters
When people ask me about the differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics, I always start in the same place: Events.
While GA4 and UA are about as different as night and day – hence the need for solid GA4 education – I believe Events are the most important difference to highlight.
GA4 events are basically actions users can take on your website. A page_view or scroll, for example. And all the data in GA4 – whether in the Reports dashboard, or creating something in Explore – has events as their foundation.
While there are some default events included in your GA4 dashboard upon startup, there’s no limit to the types of custom events you can create, depending on how your website is configured.
And within those events, there’s something called parameters, which are basically additional details to give each action more context.
To better explain GA4 events and parameters, I recently created a couple posts on both topics. As I add to these, I’ll share them in future newsletters. In the meantime, I would love your feedback, especially if you get stuck somewhere in my instructions and I could clarify them better.
What Are Google Analytics 4 Event Parameters (I’m working on a post that explains how to create them, too)
Still confused about parameters? Here’s a Reel I created to shed more light on them:
(Here’s the TikTok version, if you prefer.)
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