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INFLUENCERS OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE DURING COVID-19!!

Covid-19 has been extremely impactful on everyone’s lives around the globe. The US has been under quarantine for a couple weeks now and is continuing quarantine for as long as needed. In order for quarantine to finally come to an end, it is important for everyone to take part in it. With that being said, there are still people, especially of the younger age demographic not taking it seriously. There are still people going about their daily lives and interacting with different people everyday. How can we as a nation encourage people like this to start participating in quarantine so this can all come to an end sooner than later? Well… this is a great time for influencers to utilize the power they hold on social media.

With influencers and celebrities having such a large impact on so many people, now is a great time for them to take advantage of the large platform they have and put it to good use. If people are seeing that even their favorite influencers and celebrities are taking part in staying home and encouraging others to do so, it is likely that they will also decide to stay at home. It is important for influencers to encourage, educate, and entertain their followers during this time. Many influencers have done a great job at this. Lots have even taken advantage of this break from reality and letting followers get to know them better by going live, doing Q&A’s, and posting very raw/natural content on their day-to-day lives. A lot of influencers have also posted productivity content such as workout videos, cooking videos, and motivational words.

One person that I follow that I have noticed has done a really great job at doing this is Elsa Hosk. Elsa is one of my all time favorite models and she has been encouraging her followers daily to stay at home and stay safe. She is constantly keeping up with her platform and keeping her followers entertained and motivated to push through the hard times we are all going through together. She has been posting a ton of workout videos, cooking videos, Q&A’s, daily activities, and motivational words. While doing all of this she is also constantly reminding us all to STAY HOME! Below are a few examples of content she has been posting.

She has really done a great job at being a role model during this time and putting her platform to good use. I believe that if more influencers also take part in the encouragement of their fans to stay home, quarantine will be over before we know it.

Sources

Hosk, Elsa. “Practicing my makeup skillz because me and @nikki_makeupare going live on IG to show you guys how to create one of our signature looks sunday the 12th of April.” Instagram, 3 Apr, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-hkdtrJ-OY/.

Hosk, Elsa. “Lazy Arts and crafts day.” Instagram, 25 Mar, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-LDBsKJrmC/.

Hosk, Elsa. “Staying positive and sending you ❤️from home💛 we got this!” Instagram, 21 Mar, 2019, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-AYpraJ8PH/.

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Social Media Helping Us Stay Sane During Covid-19

The global Covid-19 quarantine is an extremely strange/foreign time for all of us. With the uncertainty of just how long we will be kept indoors with minimal to no human interaction, a time like this can truly affect an individuals mental health. As the US takes on the second week of quarantine, I have seen the minimal human interaction and limited time outside my home affect my mentality and sanity in a negative way. Although there is one thing that has kept me in the loop, and that would be social media. 

Normally I am the type of person who likes to limit my self on my daily activity on social media. I often view it as a distraction in my day-to-day life and try to only use it when I know I have everything done that day. But while stuck inside my own house quarantining and on town lockdown, social media has actually helped me get through each day. There are 3 categories that social media has provided for my sanity during this quarantine which include, communication, entertainment, and physical activity.

Communication

It is so so important to communicate with people during quarantine. With the lack of human interaction while being forced to stay inside your own house, it is necessary to keep up with your friends and family in order to not go completely crazy. Social media has been the perfect place to do this. With social media, I have been able to keep up to date with all my friends and family I have not been able to see in the past couple weeks. Being able to easily talk with my loved ones through social media has really kept my mental health from degrading from this quarantine.

Entertainment

Boredom is such a common feeling during quarantine. I am constantly thinking what can I possibly do to pass by this time... besides sleep. Well... let me tell you about my TikTok screen time. Actually, you probably don’t want to know. Social media has done a perfect job at keeping me entertained and not extremely bored while spending this time alone and indoors. I have personally come to discover that TikTok is extremely entertaining/funny and such a good way for me to rid of my boredom. Instagram has picked up on new trends for users almost everyday (until tomorrow posts, story challenges, Instagram’s filter games, etc.) Instagram has turned “casual.” It has been fun watching everyone pick up on the trends and actually getting to see a lot of people’s true quarantine selves. Another entertaining platform during this time has been YouTube. Lots of creators have been getting super creative in their posts and posting more often. Thanks to social media, I am able to stay entertained during quarantine.

Physical Activity

For me, this category is a huge one. I am someone who like to have atleast some type of physical activity everyday. Whether its going to the gym or even just walking to and from class, physcial activity is extremely important in my day to day life. Well with all the gyms closed and no classes to walk to, my physical activity levels have quickly shot down and it has been very detrimental on my mental health. But thanks to social media, I am able to keep moving everyday. SO many gyms, fitness accounts, influencers, celebrities, even friends, have been posting at home workouts on their social media counts almost everyday. I would like to believe that atleast the majority of people know how important it is for people’s physical and mental health to have some sort of daily activity. With all these different accounts posting so often in order to push and encourage the community to stay fit during the quarantine, the options to my daily physical activity are practically endless. Social media has really been able to push me to keep up with my goals I’ve had before the quaranting swooped in. 

In conclusion, although too much social media during normal times can be unhealthy, during the quarantine it has done wonders at keeping me sane and I would like to believe I can say that for a lot of people. With the sense of community, outlets of entertainment, and endless online workouts all through social media, I think I will come out of quarantine just fine. 

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Treat Your Customer Like An Influencer

This week in class we have been talking about creating a strategic plan. One element within this plan is establishing your brand voice. Freberg describes brand voice as “the overall tone, personality, and entity that you want to present online” (Freberg 116). She then goes on explaining that brand voice is one of the most important elements when building a brand. One company that I believe does an amazing job at expressing their brand voice is Glossier.

Glossier is a billion dollar beauty start-up company which is known for listening to and engaging with its customers created by Emily Weiss. Weiss started this company completely through social media. Glossier all sprouted through Weiss’s beauty blog known as Into The Gloss which was launched in 2010 when she was only 25. Her main goal when starting this blog was to focus on beauty as an element of personal style through storytelling. As the blog began to take off and Weiss’s learned knowledge and passion towards consumer-brand relationship took over, she decided to build her Glossier empire which officially launched in 2014. 

Weiss strived to build a people-powered beauty brand based around the idea of what customers really wanted. As a self start-up company created in a time in which the Internet has taken over, Weiss strategically spread the word of her new brand and built her fanbase through social media (as well as Into The Gloss.) Through social media, Glossier is able to connect and engage with its customers wants and needs. For example, Glossier wanted to create a facial cleanser. With unlimited types of cleansers on the market, Glossier decided to extend the idea to its customers, in which Weiss describes them as an extention of their team. Through social media, Glossier asked customer’s what their dream face wash would be. After thousands of feedack comments across multiple platforms, the Milky Jelly Cleanser was created. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwf1gMSfBd8  -story of milky jelly cleanser

Glossier sincerely values each customer as an influencer, taking into careful consideration what each customer has to say about the brand and its products.  Forbes.com shares that “Weiss told Tech Crunch last year that Glossier is building “an emotional commerce experience which is focused on a breadth of connection, and not a breadth of product.” With that intent in mind, Glossier doubled sales in 2018, secured one million new customers, and earned its unicorn status.” With its amazing social media content and exceptional brand voice, Glossier truly has stolen the hearts of many beauty lovers and will continue to thrive in the digital marketing world. 

Sources:

https://www.instagram.com/glossier/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwf1gMSfBd8

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonbird1/2019/03/24/how-glossier-turned-a-blog-into-a-billion-dollar-brand/#17db8cbf242d

Podcast: Breaking Beauty Podcast: Ep.11 GLOSSIER FOUNDER EMILY WEISS

Book: Freberg, Karen. Social Media for Strategic Communication: Creative Strategies and Research-Based Applications. SAGE, 2019.

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Authenticity is KEY!!

Authentic: Adjective not false or copied; genuine; real: 

This week in class we talked about personal branding and why it is so detrimental to be authentic online in order to gain a positive audience. We started off by asking ourselves, what does authenticity mean to you? 

- being 100% true to who you are

- transparency and honesty

- being yourself 

Here are a few of the common answers I noticed while learning everyone’s connotated definition of the word. As we all came to an agreement that each of our definitions related back to each other, we then talked about why we think it is important for your brand, whether it be a personal brand or a company brand, to be 100% authentic. 

1. Builds Trust

In the current social media world, it is not uncommon for people and even brands to not showcase who they really are. This means that there are a lot of trust issues between consumers and brands. Having a healthy trust based relationship with your audience is extremely important. This relationship will help gain more respect, growth, support, connections, and LOYALTY towards your brand. 

2. Brings Happiness

One reason for being authentic that really stands out to me, is that you will be happier. Yes, showing everyone your complete true self can be scary at first due to the vulnerability that comes along with it, but once you get over those first few scary moments, you will realize that you are so much happier. Social media can be a scary place. People can be judgmental and the amount of likes and/or comments do affect a lot of people’s mental health issues. But, once you begin to realize that your worth is not defined on those things, and you know that you are being true to yourself and others around you, you are going to become such a happier person. 

3. Building A Positive Reputation

Having a good reputation when you are trying to brand yourself or your company is so so so important. Reputation as Freberg would say is very “fragile.” Fragile meaning that it can go from outstanding to breaking and crumbling over night. Being authentic is the first step towards building a good reputation. There have been many times where influencers will have a great reputation then all of a sudden they will get caught doing something fabricated and their reputation will head straight to the dirt. This can all be avoided if you are completely authentic all the time. 

So, as shown, being authentic is the key to success in the social media world. No one enjoys being around or supporting someone who is known as being fake in person and it is the exact same thing when it comes to social media. No one is going to want to support a person or a company that is not being honest to their customers. So, always. be. authentic. 

Source(s)

Freberg, Karen June. Social Media for Strategic Communication: Creative Strategies and Research-Based Applications. SAGE, 2019.

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Social Media: Art or Science?

A topic in class we had recently stemmed off the question, “is social media an art or a science?” While I believe most people you would ask this question to would instantaneously say art, our class, as well as textbook author, Karen Freberg, agreed on social media being both an art as well as a science. 

So how can social media be labeled as an art AND a science? Isn’t it just a place to share pictures and stories from recent events and activities? Where does the science tie in to this? How “artistic” is it really? Lets talk about it. 

Social Media as a SCIENCE

Seeing social media as a science can be a harder concept to grasp than seeing it as a form of art. Surprisingly there are many aspects of science that go into the drive one has to make and put a post out into the world.

1. Demographics

       When deciding what to post on social media, especially for a marketer, demographics are heavily looked at. Deciding what platform to post on all depends on a specific demographic they may be wanting to reach. This requires the research and knowledge of your targeted audience. 

2. Analytics

       For someone who is promoting their product, company, or even their own selves, it is very important to analyze the impact that your post(s) have on your audience. By looking at and measuring your data, you can learn how to impact your audience even more with what you know they enjoy. These can be things such as time of posts, certain hashtags or captions, different types of pictures. 

Social Media as an ART

Social media as an art seems a lot more self explanatory than social media as a science. Creativity being put into a post(s) is the KEY to producing a successful social media account. Let’s dive deeper into what creativity in the social media world consists of. 

1. Aesthetics

       One of the most common forms of art on social media is the aesthetics of it. An audience is often drawn to a companies account if they find their feed aesthetically pleasing to look at. For example, below is a screenshot I took of etsy’s Instagram feed. The feed gives off a very bright and “clean” type of look. This feed is likely to draw an audience in more than if the posts were random and did not seem to match. 

2. Photography

       Another common form of art that social media portrays, is the photographs and videos taken and chosen to be posted. It is important for a user to produce creative content through pictures and videos. Photography and videography are a form of art themselves and they both play a huge role in the success of an account, often being the most important and attention grabbing thing posted. Below is a screenshot of a Halo Top ice-cream Instagram account to demonstrate the creative consideration they took into the photos posted. 

To conclude...

So, as you can see, social media is truly a mix of art AND science. The more you contribute both strategies into your social media account, the more successful you will be. 

Citations

Freberg, Karen June. Social Media for Strategic Communication: Creative Strategies and Research-Based Applications. SAGE, 2019.