Guess what y’all…
Social media is around twenty-four seven, and my screen time is six hours and forty minutes of my day. Over twenty percent of my day goes toward being on my phone and mainly instagram, messenger, and YouTube. Outside of school, sleep, morning and night routines, and other responsibilities, somehow, majority of my workday and downtime are face-to-face with a screen and/or social media.
The following post is a reflection on the uses of social media from the perspective of a user to branded content creators, based on student lectures my Comm 372 classmates presented.
#1 How Brands Use Social Media
How does my favorite brand use social media?
My favorite brands to follow on social media wouldn’t necessarily be for a product, I much prefer to follow the podcasts I watch. I enjoy watching the clip outs from their video-recorded podcasts, and am most likely to buy a book, service, or product they are recommending, than from an online advertisement that pops up on my feed.
The “How Brands Use Social Media” Presentation emphasizes the essential strategies: content creation, influencer partnerships, paid advertising, direct interaction, and public involvement. For content creation, the group does a good job of highlighting the example of the brand Dove. Dove’s campaign emphasizes “real” beauty and makes an effort to showcase natural beauty instead of an unrealistic, super-model aesthetic. Dove’s content which promotes “real” beauty connects to their audience because they feel represented in the brand messaging and visual content from the brand.
The group presentation also addressed how brands need to be equip and prepared for crisis. Making an action plan and communication strategy ahead of time can increase response time and minimize damage after a crisis. Airlines are a prime examples of brands where a crisis strategy is absolutely necessary for them to maintain credibility, transparency, and trust with their customers.
#2 How to Build an Audience
Continuing to use podcasters as an example, when I think about how they build their audiences depending on the category of their content, they will often build an audience for their main brand/podcast, and then have a personal account separately. This difference serves almost as a control to observe what approaches the brand is taking and their strategy to accomplish their goals. Take How to Spanish Podcast, for example, that podcast consists of a married couple that promote their podcast content on one instagram account tailored to their audience, and both personalities have their own, separate instagram accounts that appear unrelated to the How to Spanish Podcast. On their branded account their content shifts over time from informational graphics to heavy reel and video posts. This demonstrates one way the brand accounts for the shifting demands of their audience and platform.
In group two’s presentation, they said successfully building an audience happens across multiple platforms to increase reach and engagement. Additionally, the different platforms are crucial for diversifying your content, to keep your audience attention. Key tools to building your audience according to groups two is posting consistency, when your followers are most active, establishing a quality aesthetic for your content, and interacting with your audience often. For brands establishing a content calendar can help cover your bases with all of the elements above. Then you can plan ahead, adjust, and monitor performance to better build your audience.
#3 The Effects of Social Media
When I consider the effects of social media, I think like any good tool, its use needs to be regulated and strategic. Social media is a great way to stay connected with long-distance acquaintances, family members, or old classmates. However, the goal of social media platforms is to captivate users because they capitalize on your attention span, and time spent on the app. While completing this very assignment or any assignment for this class, really, I find whenever I have to audit or analyze a brand or influencer on social media, I get distracted by my “for you page.” Then it takes me twice as long, if not more, to complete an assignment because I fall prey to the algorithm and addictive tactics used to engage users. A main danger group three mentions with social media is social comparison. I think the threat of comparison is so dangerous because users have a hard time separating real-life reality from the virtual reality. Filters, angles, makeup, clothing/drip, can all camouflage, disguise, or distract from the real condition or appearance of the person posing. When we compare ourselves to augmented realities or unrealistic aesthetics, it often causes a harmful self-perception or the desire to fit in, thus promoting the false narrative or standard. All those effects get multiplied as the use of social media is habit forming, and becomes a part of our daily lives. Group three also mentioned social media features and algorithms exploit psychological principles like reinforcement or gratification, for example, the promotion of trending content, Snap Streaks, or the pressure to go viral.
While social media is inevitable for many of us, it doesn’t have to control us. Group three emphasized how limiting screen time, curating your feed/training your algorithm, by following positive, education, and realistic brands/influencers, and focusing on real world connections, are approved strategies for healthier social media use.
Group three’s presentation helped me get a better grasp on where my time is going and how to better connect with reality, even through social media is a part of my daily life.
Let me know your screen time and if you are trying to decrease it, in the comments.
Until next time,
EJ