Meta continues to delight its audience with new products that help promote accounts. We will discuss two key announcements, the implementation of which will directly affect bloggers' earnings and help them manage their profiles more effectively. 

 

MONETIZATION

 

Last year, Instagram announced paid subscriptions. The idea is simple: a blogger makes cool content and others pay to watch it. This news was widely discussed: creators were in favor, users were a little indignant, and especially enterprising people like Lenochka Blinovskaya, did not wait until the feature is publicly available and launched the paid Stories for 160 dollars. This kind of entrepreneurial spirit is worth following, given that Instagram itself has limited the possible price tag to $10.

 

As conceived by the developers, the audience gets access to special publications, as well as a special badge, which would indicate that you are a VIP subscriber. Actually, the main news is that the testing of the feature is over and it finally became available for all US users. So in the near future, we will have an opportunity to see how foreign bloggers will use it and learn from them. 

 

The next method of monetization offered by Meta is the ability to send colorful animated gifs in response to bloggers' Reels. They are then converted into real money (the amount depends on the value of the virtual gift) and sent to the Influencer as support from a grateful audience. A similar feature is already presented in other applications, for example, Facebook Stars and TikTok, so it can't be called original.

 

 

Although the company is not yet benefiting monetarily from these innovations, everyone understands that it is only a matter of time. Bloggers will want to get paid for their content, so they will invest more in producing it and improving its quality. Also, they will surely find a way to motivate followers to send them gifts. Taking into consideration that Meta actively advertises Reels, it is good for them, because with the help of this scheme more and more attention will be paid to this format. 

 

The gifts that followers will be able to offer bloggers are colorful and animated. Their appearance is probably due to the fact that such a veiled version of payment for content is psychologically more comfortable for users and they will feel like patrons, not customers, and will be more willing to use the innovation.

 

Another way to monetize is with NFTs. The company offers a full-featured section so that creators can sell NFTs, and users can pay and become their owners without leaving Instagram. A whole system of handy tools has been developed for this, and support for Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet (among other existing ones) has been added. 

 

 

Experts doubt that trading virtual collections on Instagram will be particularly in demand, but the introduction of these features, in our opinion, is related to the development of the metauniverse. The company develops the infrastructure of the world and lets every user touch it. We can test avatars, make videos with them and even replace ourselves with them in video calls, and now we can also buy objects with virtual currency. The more "out-of-this-world" features we have around us, the faster we'll get used to them. When the Meta universe is ready, it won't be hard for us to join it, because some of the features are already familiar and clear to us.

 

PROFESSIONAL MODE

 

In December 2021, Meta talked about creating a professional mode for authors featured on Facebook. This feature gives a blogger information about their audience and publications — something like a business account on Instagram.

 

The innovation is now available to all users of the social network who live in the United States. But don’t be upset: the company announced that next year this feature will be implemented in EMEA, which includes, among others, our countries. 

 

The professional mode offers the standard information about outreach and subscribers, and also allows you to track monetization and shows info on your most loyal fans. In fact, there is nothing innovative here: part of the functionality is already built-in, but now it will be more convenient to use it and monitor the indicators since the most important information is collected on one page. The interface somewhat resembles the format of Instagram insights: everything is also simple and clear.

 

 

In-Stream ads will be available through custom mode. Bloggers will be able to insert ads before, during, and/or after running the video on Facebook. This is a great update to help monetize accounts and encourage more frequent posting. 

 

Right now, no one on Facebook posts videos for 10-15 minutes and we're used to consuming information quickly. The company explained in a statement that the update applies to long-form videos, so bloggers, as stakeholders, are expected to be invested in creating this kind of content. 

This deal benefits both parties: creators will get money for posting the content and the company will be able to keep audiences on the platform even longer. 

 

How subscribers will react to this innovation is difficult to predict. On the one hand, no one likes when the content is interrupted at the most interesting moment but on the other hand, people are already familiar with such a thing on YouTube, so it will not be too stressful for them. 

 

There’s another option possible: some people won't want to spend a lot of time watching long-form videos and will just switch to some other creator’s content. To avoid this, creators will have to work hard to improve the quality of the videos: the topic should be interesting and the presentation exciting.

 

Another interesting feature that will become available through the use of the professional mode is the ability to schedule publications based on information about when your audience is most active. This will help increase engagement and affect statistics. 

 

Instagram also has the ability to track follower activity and decide when to post based on that. While the benefit of using the feature is obvious, few bloggers focus on these metrics when choosing when to post. Time will tell how popular this feature will be on Facebook. 

 

Additionally, all users of the professional mode will be able to access the support center for creators where everyone will be able to find useful info on how to create content and monetize it. There they will also be able to read educational materials. 

 

We would like Facebook to offer unique information that is regularly updated, as well as to add to the knowledge base. In that case, the audience would be interested in the service and will use it. But we don't really need another FAQ section — people will only go there if something goes wrong because it's usually impossible to get through to tech support.

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

As you can see, the social network creates updates aimed at attracting creators and keeping them on the platform. From the outside, it seems that the company is picking a key to the heart of bloggers, trying to offer them the best conditions for making money and stealing ideas from its competitors at the same time.

 

All this is done so that the moment Zuckerberg’s metauniverse reaches its full potential, it will have no problem attracting creators and brands who will hang on to Facebook and Instagram because they give them the opportunity to make money. If a person creates cool content and is interesting as a person, subscribers will follow, which is exactly what the company wants.

 

Experts suggest that further improvements to Reels' monetization feature will include the introduction of AR and VR tools, which means we'll be one step closer to the metauniverse. And although the announced updates have not yet reached us, we can be sure that in a few years the virtual reality of Meta will be available to us.