When I first joined social media sites, of course, I never planned to use them in such a way. I joined Facebook and Twitter simply because a few of my close friends had their own profiles and I wanted to stay connected. Today, I've managed to utilize these social media tools to build my own brand - however small at the moment - and made a name for myself among small communities I interact with.
As fantastic as social media may be for connecting people, I find it most fascinating when it is used for branding and advertising. Briefly I had a job at a political media company called R&M Political where I blogged about social media. But my favorite part of the job was the "Twitter Fail of the Day," where I pointed out examples of companies failing to successfully capitalize on the use of Twitter. Here were some of my favorite examples:
The White House spells Libya wrong.
Some of the greatest were the pocket tweets -- this one from an MSNBC reporter.
And then of course there's this, from the offical Chrysler Twitter account via some frustrated intern, no doubt:
And this one from a legitimate news organization:
It's amazing to me to witness the birth of social media use in advertising, which really only started taking off in the past year, and to analyze how some companies and public figures misuse it.
Part of the reason that advertising works so effectively on social media is simply because it is spreadable. Tweets can be retweeted, Facebook posts and Youtube videos can be shared, and suddenly your target audience is exponential. This is part of the reason that people I've never met know me: my friends like the content that I tweet and post and share it with their friends -- and my name is still included. What encourages such movement is the fact that the media is spread within organic communities that form between people with similar interests. For instance, if I post something on Twitter about a celebrity sighting on the university campus, all of my fellow GW students will retweet the news among each other, both building the community and my personal brand and reputation among my peers. Similarly, if I post some news about D.C. that I read on a city blog, the online community of D.C. newzies will retweet and discuss my piece, which again works toward establishing my stake in this community and furthering my reputation.
The biggest challenge for these media companies is in figuring out how best to interact with the public. Jenkins describes the problem for these companies in context of the contemporary media convergence, where old and new media are colliding and transforming the way people use information: "Convergence requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decisions. If old consumers were assumed to be passive, new consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable and stayed where you wanted them to stay, new consumers are migratory..." (Jenkins, 2006, pg. 18-19). This presents a dilemma within media companies who want to engage the public while at the same time want to control the message. This means that if the Betty Crocker company asks all of their fans on their Facebook page what their favorite recipe is, they should be prepared for some negative comments from people criticizing their company or just "trolling" to stir up controversy. This new convergence also means that companies are held more accountable by the public - if they make a mistake, that mistake is instantly broadcast across the internet and it damages the brand. For example, gamers on Reddit are often unhappy with the customer service support they receive from EA Games. Angry customers will react by posting screenshots of their interactions with EA customer service for millions of other Reddit users - and potential EA customers - to see. They often look something like this:
As a photo, this media is even more likely to spread. Images are actually the best way to spread your content - for monetary reasons. Facebook's secret internal formula for generating a newsfeed incorporates this concept. Zuckerberg won't reveal what algorithm Facebook uses to determine what posts show up on a newsfeed from which friends and why, but this factor (a user's likeliness of his particular kinds of posts appearing on particular friends' Facebook newsfeed) plays a large part in how far and fast the media is spread. But some media bloggers, through experimentation and tech-knowledge, have deciphered certain key elements. Namely, people have figured out that on Facebook, photos are the media that spread the most (Thor, 2011). Why pictures and not status updates, videos, or other content? It's simple: because when someone clicks on a picture, a new page opens up and with a new page comes new advertisements. Each time a Facebook user clicks a photo, two new ads are shown on the right side of the pop-up or the page. Thus, Facebook wants photos to spread faster and quicker so that they receive more clicks and generate more ad revenue. It's simple, and genius.
So this is why EA customers angry with their customer service experiences posting screenshots are dangerous to the company. Never before has customer dissatisfaction been so spreadable, and this could tarnish the company's reputation unless they recognize the power of social media communities and immediately make changes to fix their issues.
Social media offers companies some dangerous challenges as well as dangerous new information. Never before could corporations and campaigns access so much public data about a person. Users of social media are excited to post details about their lives on their profiles because they see it as a way of better connecting with friends, never considering that companies can easily data-mine for information about their age, sex, location, race, habits, preferred brands, political leanings, whether they own a pet, whether they go to church, etc. They get this information easily because users are willing to make it public, using hashtags, tags, and location-based posts to connect with others. Just by examining someone's Flickr photos you can determine where they were and what their social network circle may look like (van Dijck, 2010).
The Obama campaign capitalized on this idea when they launched the 2012 reelection campaign with a Facebook application (Mehta, 2011). In joining the application, you were allowed to post a badge in your feed telling all of your friends you supported Obama (and spreading the content, of course) but at the expense of opening your profile up to the campaign. Adding the app gave it access to all of the information on your profile, including your demographics as well as the pages you "liked," and helped the campaign categorize you based on these factors. Facebook user John Smith is a 22-year-old male white college student and political science major from New York who "likes" Greenpeace and Toms shoes -- he's probably a liberal and probably voted in the 2008 election. Great - so the Obama campaign can send him invites on Facebook to campaign events concerning environmentalism and youth activism in order to appeal to him best. Byrne recognizes this reality: "As the commercial stakes in online communities rise, so too will the interest in directing the participants, or controlling the format of interaction, to suit the profit-making agendas of corporate partners," (Byrne, 2008).
But social media isn't just for the companies: regular users can make it a means of branding themselves, and some have done so successfully enough to land jobs in their fields of interest. By using, for example, your twitter feed as a kind of newsblog, sharing articles, commenting on events or polls, and answering questions from others about a particular subject, you can become considered an expert in the field, regardless of any job you might hold in real life outside of the internet. (Or at the very least, you could get hired as a social media expert!) And in connecting with others who may be considered mini-celebrities in this particular field of interest, you're working to build an informative and engaging community.
A good example is Dave Stroup. Stroup is not a journalist. TBD describes him as "a player among the D.C. digerati but not a journalist," and admits "we're not exactly sure what he does;" nevertheless, the news site names him as one of the "51 Journalists with the most Klout." When Stroup tweeted last week that homeless man and local legend "Black Cat Bill" had died, though, everyone in the D.C. blogosphere and twittersphere believed him (Kearney, 2011). Popular sites DCist and WeLoveDC carried the news, and it even found its way to a Washington Post blog. However, it was soon discovered that "Black Cat Bill" was actually still alive, forcing all of these blogs to issue corrections. But the fact that Stroup, not a journalist, yet just as trusted in the D.C. news community, could report information that other sources took as fact without double-checking, is telling of the power of these intimate communities. Your twitter presence really does matter - sometimes it can even determine life and death. Personal branding can be a powerful tool, just as much as corporate branding.
So I take pride in the fact that my friends refer to me as "nikkimann17," and that people recognize me from Facebook. However small my community might be, I've obviously made an impact, one which can translate into life outside of the internet as well. It would be wonderful to become considered an "expert" in a subject area, but for now I am mostly the friend who provides people with all of their important news stories of the day through posts on Facebook and Twitter, and as a journalism major, informing the public is all I could ever want.
Bibliography:
Byrne, D. (2008.) "The future of "the" race: identity, discourse, and rise of computer-mediated public spheres." Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media. Edited by Anna Everett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Jenkins, H. (2006.) Convergence Culture. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Kearney, R. (2011, November 30.) "How Dave Stroup convinced the D.C. blogosphere that 'Black Cat Bill' was dead." TBD. Retrieved from http://www.tbd.com/articles/2011/11/how-dave-stroup-convinced-the-d-c-blogosphere-that-black-cat-bill-was-dead-69761.html
Mehta, S. (2011, April 18.) "The rise of the internet electorate." Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/18/nation/la-na-social-media-20110418
Thor, T. (2011, June 6.) How to get tons of clicks on Facebook ads: images. All Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.allfacebook.com/how-to-get-tons-of-clicks-on-facebook-ads-images-2011-06
van Dijck, J. (2010, October 18.) Flickr and the culture of connectivity: sharing views, experiences, memories. Sage Publications.
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