Did you know that some contents that suggest our Facebook's home feed is recommended by AI? Meta announced!

Social media platforms have been evolving over the years, and one of the significant trends has been the increased reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) to populate user feeds. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has been at the forefront of this shift, with the company revealing in its Q1 earnings report that it is increasingly leaning on AI-based content recommendations to drive user engagement.

In this article, we will explore the implications of this trend for social media strategy, and how businesses can maximize their reach and resonance in each app, whether you are a beginner or an expert in the business world.

The Rise of AI Recommendations

Meta has been doubling down on AI over the past year, with the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, noting last July that it planned to double the amount of AI recommendations in user feeds. At that time, around 15% of the content users were shown on Facebook came via AI recommendations, and "a little more than that" on Instagram.

Fast forward to today, and Meta has revealed that more than 20% of the content displayed in people's Facebook feeds has been recommended by its AI system, while on Instagram, AI recommendations now account for some 40% of the content shown. This is a significant shift, given that Meta's market advantage thus far has been your social graph, and the fact that pretty much everyone uses Facebook and/or Instagram, which gives it a big leg up over the competition.

The TikTok Factor

However, with the arrival of TikTok, the approach to recommendations has shifted. TikTok's algorithm focuses on each individual post, not on who you're connected to necessarily. That's a step away from 'social' media, as such, and more towards entertainment. This is why TikTok has repeatedly noted that it's actually an entertainment network, not a social app.

Facebook and Instagram are now moving in that direction as well by highlighting the top-performing content from topical categories. This shift towards entertainment means that social media strategy needs to focus on creating good, entertaining content, especially in Reels, which has seen a 24% increase in total time spent on Instagram, according to Meta.

Maximizing Your Reach and Resonance

For brands, this shift towards entertainment could provide some level of advantage. While people are viewing more content on Facebook and Instagram, they're also posting fewer updates themselves, with personal sharing increasingly shifting into DMs instead. This leaves more room for the best content to get greater reach in the app.

The challenge, however, is that businesses are no longer looking to maximize social engagement or interactive value as such. Instead, they need to focus more directly on entertainment value. Creating entertaining content that aligns with your audience's interests is key to getting more reach in either app.

Meta notes that users are now resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, a 100% increase over the last six months. This means that topical, thematic content could actually see more reach as a result. The focus of Meta's AI recommendations is to show users more content that they're likely to be interested in, which is based on the content that's generating the most views and time spent within each topic.

However, creating entertaining content isn't necessarily easy. It's one thing to say "create content that your audience will love" and another thing to do it. But the shift towards AI-based content recommendations presents new opportunities for businesses to explore. By understanding what content is generating the most views and time spent within each topic, businesses can tailor their content to meet their audience's interests.