Unpacking Instagram’s Focus on Sends Per Reach

TODAY’S EDITION

• Instagram head Adam Mosseri elaborates more on the importance of sends per reach metric — I dive into the short history of Instagram’s focus on shareable content, tips for creators and brands, implications for influencer marketing, and more.

• Threads celebrates its one-year anniversary — a study with Wakefield uncovers how people have been using Threads in its first year.

• Meta updates its label for AI content after backlash from the photography community.

• YouTube improves its Erase Song tool to help creators easily remove copyrighted music from their videos.

• Amazon says creators can’t use music in their shoppable videos ahead of Amazon Prime Day.

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DEEP DIVE

Unpacking Instagram’s Focus on Sends Per Reach: A Timeline, Why It Matters, and Tips for Creators & Brands

You've likely heard phrases like 'sends per reach' or 'send rate' if you’ve been paying attention to Instagram recently. Adam Mosseri, Instagram's head, has been discussing this metric more frequently. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it's the rate at which people see your content and share it via direct messages (DMs).

A Timeline of Sends Per Reach

At the end of May, Mosseri first mentioned this during his Ask Me Anything session. Someone asked whether watch time is more important than likes or comments. He responded that send rates are actually more important for reach. Since then, this topic has surfaced several times, including in a recent interview with Colin & Samir, where he provided more detail. This week, he elaborated on how sends per reach is one of the most important signals in Instagram’s ranking.

Why Sends Per Reach Matter

Why the focus on sends per reach? Mosseri says this aligns with Instagram’s mission to help people connect over content they discover. The best indicator of this is content that you see and share with someone. You might like a post or comment on it passively, but when you send it to someone, it resonates with you in some way—it could be funny, entertaining, informative, or provocative. It’s also a better indicator of content you like because there’s content you feel comfortable sharing with friends but might not want to like or comment on publicly.

The Unique Role of Direct Messaging

One of Instagram's unique features is its integral direct messaging aspect. Personally, I spend a lot of time on the platform, sending and receiving Reels from my wife and friends. Recommendations like Explore and the Reels tab play a significant role in what we discover and consume on Instagram, but your direct messages likely do, too. This is why other platforms, like TikTok, are also pushing more messaging features.

Instagram's New Features Promoting Content Sharing

Instagram isn’t just emphasizing the importance of content sharing; it's also introducing additional features to support this behavior. These include a Share Button on Reels, prompting users to share their posts via DMs, and displaying public share counts on more content, not limited to Reels.

What It Means for Creators & Brands

Whenever Instagram prioritizes a certain type of content or action in its algorithm, it inevitably stirs reactions among creators, brands, and social media managers. If it’s something they aren’t already doing, it can be a significant change, which may cause frustration. On the other hand, some are excited about these changes because they see it as an opportunity to try something new that can help them grow.

Creating Shareable Content

With all the emphasis on sends per reach, creators and brands should adapt to optimize their content for reach and increase the likelihood of it being surfaced in Recommendations. How can they do that?

Firstly, creators and brands should track how often their content is shared. Currently, Instagram doesn’t provide native analytics for sends per reach, but Mosseri has mentioned that his team is exploring this. For now, creators and brands can manually track this to establish a baseline for their shares per reach, while analyzing which content was shared the most to identify trends.

Studies like the New York Times’ "The Psychology of Sharing: Why Do People Share Online?" and Harvard Business’ "Emotional Combinations That Make Stories Go Viral" show that people tend to share things that evoke emotion—whether it's entertaining, makes them angry, or validates their feelings. Depending on the content you create, bringing this to life will vary. A good practice is to think, “Would someone share this?” and “Why would someone share this?”

Additionally, include calls to action in captions or text overlays to encourage viewers to share the content. Instead of just urging viewers to like or comment, prompt them to share. This puts it at the top of viewers' minds and helps establish the habit of sharing your content via direct messages with relevant people. As with all CTAs, be clear about the action you want the viewer to take.

Incorporating This into Influencer Marketing

For brands running influencer marketing campaigns, consider metrics related to shares when evaluating creator partners and reporting on campaign content. With share counts now public, brands can gain more insight into how often content from creators is being shared. Although they won’t be able to see the reach of that post unless the creator shares it or uses an influencer marketing platform, you can request this information from creators as you would with any other metrics. When reporting on campaigns, incorporate metrics around shares as well.

In time, you can begin identifying which creators to collaborate with based on whether you aim to drive impressions, engagements, sales, and now shares. This allows you to select the right creators aligned with your specific campaign goals

What’s Next

Social media is often a copycat world. Plus, social media has moved to more intimate and close-knit experiences. It's likely that other platforms will also focus on shareable content. Therefore, it's wise for creators and brands to consider how to create content that people want to share across all their platforms, especially where short-form video is available.

Related: Instagram to Reward Smaller, Original Content Creators

If you need support with your influencer and creator marketing efforts, feel free to reach out to me (reply to this email or DM). I’ll be taking on clients full-time. More on this next week.

NEWS, TRENDS & INSIGHTS

Threads Celebrates Its One-Year Anniversary

Threads celebrated its one-year anniversary today (July 5th). Mark Zuckerberg revealed earlier this week that the platform now boasts over 175 million monthly active users.

While growth has slowed since reaching 100 million users in the first five days, Threads has impressively shipped new products and features quickly. These include highly requested features like Post editing, Topic Tags, Saved Posts, a TweetDeck-like desktop experience, and an API. Hopefully, year two will fulfill more requests, such as stronger analytics.

In the meantime, here’s insight into how people are using Threads via a new study.

Meta Updates AI Label After Backlash

Meta updated its AI label to ‘AI Info’ from ‘Made With AI’ following feedback and frustration from creators. This change addresses concerns, especially among photographers, who found their posts labeled 'Made With AI' when using basic editing tools, due to Meta’s adoption of industry standards like C2PA to identify AI usage.

The updated label is better but not a final solution, as it still lacks context for viewers about how AI was used for a photo or video. Yet, for now, this balances transparency for AI-modified content while crediting creators for their work.

Instagram Tests Recent Highlights Feature

Instagram is experimenting with Recent Highlights, showcasing Story Highlights from followed accounts between feed posts. This helps make Highlights more discoverable, alongside other tests like a redesign and linkability from Reels. Together, these can encourage creators and brands to remember to save their most engaging Stories as Highlights for increased exposure.

YouTube Expands Language Support for Handles

YouTube now supports handles in 75 languages, allowing creators to personalize unique handles. If creators change their handle, YouTube retains the previous one for 14 days, facilitating a switch back.

This allows creators to choose handles that reflect their identity in their preferred language. However, it could make it harder for them to be discovered, such as if viewers do not have relevant keyboards to type their handles or if some apps and platforms do not display or support the characters in their handles.

YouTube Improves Erase Song Tool for Creators

YouTube has updated its Erase Song tool with an AI-powered algorithm to accurately detect and remove copyrighted content. Creators now have two options when using this feature: "Erase Song," which removes copyright-claimed segments while preserving other audio like voice-overs, and "Mute All Sound," which silences all audio for a selected duration.

These improvements aid creators in addressing and managing copyright claims more effectively, increasing the chances that their videos are eligible for monetization.

Twitch Expands Stories with Video Feature

Twitch has expanded its Stories feature to include videos up to 60 seconds long. Streamers can select different expiration times, ranging from 1 to 48 hours. Twitch also plans to bring Stories to the desktop soon. Stories have been one of the features Twitch uses to help creators with discovery and engage with audiences when they aren’t live.

As a video-first platform, supporting videos is a no-brainer. Allowing viewers to consume Stories on the desktop will also help adoption, as the desktop is where many viewers watch live streams from their favorite streamers.

Amazon Restricts Use of Music in Shoppable Videos for Creators

Amazon updated its guidelines for its Influencer Program. One of the biggest updates is the restriction on the use of music in shoppable videos, such as those on its TikTok-like Inspire feed and Storefronts. This includes both added music and background music. Effective June 27th, videos containing music may be muted, displaying an "Audio not available for this video" label.

Music and short-form video go hand in hand, but as TikTok and Universal Music Group have shown, music licensing is a complex issue. Creators might not welcome this update, as music can significantly enhance their content's appeal. However, it's a strategy for Amazon to mitigate issues with labels and music rights owners, especially given the videos are created for commercial use.

With Amazon Prime Day around the corner, some creators will likely need to make adjustments.

Related: TikTok Challenges Amazon Prime Day

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THANK YOU

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