Why Facebook’s Embeddable Post is the Best Kind of News for Big Brands

It’s been less than 48 hours since we heard the news of Facebook rolling out a new feature – that of embeddable posts. As a larger attempt to become a part of public conversations on the interwebs, an initial rollout of 5 major media organizations (Mashable, CNN, Huffington Post, People and Bleacher Report) gained access to what appears to be more than just a feature of convenience. Embedding, which for a long time has signified authenticity, in lieu of a picture of a picture (err, a screenshot) is not a crazy game-changer for a big social behemoth like Facebook.

But you know what’s interesting about this shiny new feature?

Legitimacy of Micro-Content

It points to a much bigger and greater phenomenon – the evolution and legitimacy of social content or rather, micro-content. From Justin Bieber’s tweets, to Venus William’s announcements, to epic customer rants on brand pages to Chipotle’s existential questions posted to Twitter – these days micro-content becomes, makes and IS the news. Looking at the shift, or rather blurring between lines of mainstream journalism and user-generated content on social media platforms, this isn’t a revolutionary discovery. What is more interesting here is the stamp of legitimacy that such wee, minor feature tweaks such as enabling embeddable posts by facebook attach to our social media practices. The message this development sends out is more than just “Look journalists! We made your job a bit easier.” – It tells us that our social conversations on Facebook and Twitter and other social media are now driving content and publishing in a bigger way than we could ever imagine.

Wait, so hold on a second, are we saying that snippets of socially relevant shareable information could potentially be Big News?

And Why is this Great News for Brands ?

Yep – that status update or a tweet (essentially what was, till now, your friend’s endless jibber jabber about their kid’s new crayon set or Hugh Jackman’s deadlifts) – forms not just content, but micro-content. And this is exactly why embeddable posts are really good news for brands.

It’s simple. Really.

Brands are amongst the biggest publishers of micro-content on the interwebs. Loop in the added benefit that most of their Facebook content is public with the intention of contributing to conversations, and embeddable posts made it just that much easier for that next big Brand stunt to become a headlining news story.

It might also mean that your cravings for Hugh Jackman’s abs, either as an admirer or an aspirer, suddenly become very public information indeed.

 

The 3 Big Takeaways for Brands from Facebook’s Introduction of Embeddable Posts

1) Great Exposure: A single newsjacking or fake hack or amazing status update that works and brands stand to garner themselves a huge amount of coverage from multiple mainstream news outlets. In other words, when Chipotle last week tweeted “Do I have a tweet?”, it didn’t just happen in the consciousness of a few confused followers. We saw fellow redditers and Buzzfeed buddie latch onto it and make it go viral (followed by Mashable which follows up with a fashionably late report for those that don’t have the time).

2) Online Moves Offline: Like an Escher painting, news or rather information and discovery have become the mainstay of social media platforms and user activities worthy enough to make the headlines in print, completes the online-offline circle. Micro-content is now more and more repurposed in the offline world, not just in the press but also in conversations. Think about it, wouldn’t it be nice when someday you pick up the New York Times and see a front page story about your brand’s incredible status update?

3) Justify Social Media Investments: With such growing legitimacy, social media teams at big brands everywhere have greater reason to leverage their content newsrooms and justify their investments into tools and analytics platforms in this space. More and more social media is becoming a powerhouse of public relations, conversations, customer service and now press – all rolled into one.

To sum it all up dear brands, your tiny short form deliberations, or content as they are better known appear to have outgrown their royal status as mere kings. When it makes the headlines, micro-content as we at Unmetric like to call it, is starting to rule the world.