META FINED, REACTIONS PAY THE BILLS, AND HOW INFLUENCERS CHEAT

PLUS: does Instagram engagement suck or is it just you?

To get us started, “social media triggers children to dislike their own bodies,” this according to a study over at The Guardian.

Also, Meta is being fined by the EU for “forcing users to accept targeted ads.” Oh, and “Meta's New Vision Of The Future Doesn't Mention The Metaverse Even Once.”

Is Facebook heading towards another pivot? Shocking!

“Influencers discovered they could earn tens of thousands of dollars on the platform by making simple reaction videos,” writes the New Yorker.

“As long as fifteen minutes a day allows them to forgo full-time jobs and focus on music, they will continue to pump out face-filter videos.

“I do it every day to make sure I can pay my rent, dude,” Koch said.

To make you feel even worse, please read ‘30 ways influencers cheated their way to millions of dollars,” with lots of screenshots and info on “how Twitch streamers fake their numbers,” “fake Instagram engagement,” and more.

Yes, I’m all about leaving social media, but while we’re there we need to maximize our efforts to get folks to visit our sites and subscribe to our newsletters.

When Sarah Palmyra (with her 896.5K followers on TikTok) was asked how to engage with her audience, she offered this bit of advice:

“Stories are a really great way to engage with people. I just ask my audience questions, what do you wanna see next? What do you think about this? What do you like about this? And then that’s when I really check my direct messages and see who is saying what. And I have those real conversations just one-on-one.”

I’ll leave you with this:

For posts published by Instagram business accounts, the average engagement rate almost doubled in the past year and is up to 1.94%. Carousel posts still have the highest engagement rate (3.15%), while photo posts have the lowest average engagement rate (1.18%).

If the average engagement rate on Instagram is around 2%, imagine how low the actual click rate is for the “link in bio” game we’re all playing?!

Gee, it’s no wonder that we’re not seeing huge traffic to online stores and tour date pages!

I’ve been leaning on the “link in bio” strategy since November (since “Tweets with a link garner 28.76% less reach” says Buffer), to drive traffic from socials to my various projects (see my Linktree here), just like I hope you’re testing out. Hit me up if you have questions or ideas (seth@socialmediaescape.club).