Facebook Broadcast Channels - another broadcasting tool from Meta, but they’re not How Brands Grow…

Meta has rolled out yet another broadcasting channel, this time for Facebook and Messenger.

Much like the Instagram broadcasting channels we wrote about a few weeks ago, the Facebook and Messenger broadcast channels are a type of public, one-to-many method of communication, available for anybody who manages Facebook pages (in relevant markets).

Did you hear that? It’s the collective sigh of social media managers around the world working out how to add this channel into their marketing mix…. But hold your horses there, friends…

Can brands use Facebook Broadcast Channels?

Meta is currently testing the ability for brands to create broadcast channels, and they expect to roll this out in the coming weeks after the release of this feature for creators and public figures. We recently wrote about how brands can use Whatsapp Channels to communicate with customers in a move from Meta to start monetising the platform, and it stands to reason that some of the benefits to Facebook Broadcast Channels could be the same - providing an opportunity to engage users and gain insights on sentiment (e.g. reactions) from those in your channel. But…

What’s the verdict?

Meta discusses these new channels as a way for people to create deeper connections with creators - and it certainly has merits amongst super fans and advocates of content creators.

But for brands? We’re less convinced. If superfans are only 10% of a fan base, for the sake of argument, perhaps energy is better spent engaging the other 90% of casual followers on public channels - after all, if we’ve learned anything from Byron Sharp, it’s that brands grow through increasing their share of occasional customers, not through deepening fandom, which has limited empirical evidence for benefits.

That’s for brands though - what about creators?

They have less of an interest in market share and more interest in creating an engaged following, so there’s naturally a better use case for them here. But with only 24 hours in a day, is it worth it? Call us cynics, but we suspect most professional content creators are going to be focused on creating engaging branded content and getting it in front of lots of people i.e. the stuff that pays the bills.

One to watch - although we’re not convinced there’s a meaningful commercial application for brands here yet.