• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 26, 2015

FleishmanHillard Senior Vice President and Senior Partner Ephraim Cohen got the “Content Distribution” panel at the Content Marketing Insider Summit off by going right to the bottom line question: Facebook’s shift to a “paid” vs. “organic” strategy for brand content.

Moderator Cohen began not by asking his panel, but by asking the summit audience for a show of hands to see how many people in the room understood that Facebook made that shift on Jan. 1, segregating and explicit brand campaign content into a paid bucket -- meaning it would no organic distribution on the social network.

“Pretty good,” Cohen said as most of the attendees raised their hands. He then went on to share FH’s own observations, noting that the PR firm’s social media practice sees that good “conversational” brand content will still get “6% to 10%” coverage among its Facebook followers on an organic basis.

Basically, Cohen said Facebook is shifting toward a classic “church and state” view of brand stories: If it’s a good story that stands on its own merits, Facebook will let it pass through. If it’s not, they have to pay to get it distributed.

Panelist Michail Takach, Director of Digital Marketing, North America, Manpower Group, said the shift was inevitable -- mainly from a consumer’s point-of-view.

“What we suspected is that people are tired of hearing brands talk about themselves as a rule,” he said, adding that Manpower made a “dramatic shift” in its own content strategy this year to deal with that shift, opting to focus more on the stories of “the people we impact and deliver” than “talking about ourselves.”