By: Elizabeth Cerreto
The Rise of the Digital Era
It’s the year 2000, cell phones were just becoming a huge hit, and the Internet moved a bit faster than it ever did. MySpace turned into Facebook, and the rest is still being understood through the thousands of different social media and digital platforms that have launched since. Benjamin Hale (2015), explains the evolution of social media as platforms that cater to everyone and humans who engage in social media as social animals. Since the rise of social media people all over the world have connected and involved in communication that they can build networks out of and build new, innovative brands for themselves and companies and organizations. Social media has changed the way we do business, it has changed the way we communicate, and most important altered the way we become and sustain our leadership styles.
The Science Behind Social Media
The world of social media has expanded so much in the past decade that there seems to be a science behind building a brand, gaining followers, and reaching your target audience. Users of social media platforms ranging from large businesses to ordinary people. Everyone on social platforms is engaging to reach out to others and to build a brand for themselves or their company that will be recognized and hopefully takes off into something that can turn themselves or their company into a widely known person or place. In the podcast, The Science of Social Media, many different contributors talk weekly about various aspects of the digital world. Michael Stelzner (2017), introduces the idea of social media algorithms that allow people to calculate and use them in their favor to reach as many people as possible. Stelzner says that at one point all posts that were made on social platforms were able to be seen, however now that so many people are on the platforms it is impossible to see everything. Algorithms are used to cater to what each specific user is interested in and lifts up the quality of their content they are seeing. Marketers are trying to build brands, and this could potentially make them struggle. Companies need to strategize and look at the types of people that are visiting sites in order to increase their sales and engagement over their platforms.
Engaging Through Digital Platforms
Engaging through digital platforms has allowed the world to become such a smaller place. To start, businesses can interact with other companies all over the world to network and build their companies around the globe. Hale (2015) said, “One of the things that started happening right in this period is that social media not only became widely used, it also became widespread in business.” Businesses took advantage of the social media sites that were being launched and began to include plugins on their sites to easily access their own company’s platforms. This allowed people are visiting company’s websites to have straight access to their latest posts and up to date news on what was going on in the business. It is easier to grow and to have many locations all over the world because social media allows for communication to be done digitally instead of face-to-face. Companies are strategizing and branding their organizations through platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Zachary Small (2017), showed how a fast food company, Wendy’s, took to twitter to build a persona and reach users with a different marketing strategy. Wendy’s decided to “roast” accounts that tweeted at them, and it successfully engaged other Twitter users, which increased their sales and gained them more followers on their social platforms. Another excellent example of building a person on social platforms is Sour Patch Kids. According to Small (2017), Sour Patch Kids went with being funny and launched a pranking campaign on Snapchat that gained them over twelve thousand followers. Small (2017), says that if a company is able to build a noticeable persona through their social platforms, then they are aimed for success. It is all about strategizing to be different and give the people what they want.
Culture Formed From Social Media
picture: ©iStockphoto.com/anttoniu
Building a brand for oneself or a company is a set of techniques that create a cultural persona of how you wish someone or something views you or your business. According to Douglas Holt (2016), “digital technologies have not only created potent new social networks but also dramatically altered how culture works.” The launch and rise in popularity amongst connecting through social media have built a fast-paced, innovative, world of collaborating users. In a specific way, social media has changed everything because it allows users to not worry about geographic locations and instead makes it very easy for people to connect in ways and with people they may not have been fortunate to connect with, without social media. Holt (2016) also notes that because communities are so intertwined and connected their cultural influence on each other has become very direct. He calls them crow cultures (2016) in which large groups of people are breaking new grounds because of the abilities social media has given them.
What It Means to Be A Celebrity On Social Media
With the culture that has formed and the techniques understood to make content go viral and engage people in specific platforms a lot of people have found ways to gain fame and be known as a social media celebrity. Ordinary people have created content on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram that have blown up and completely have them known very well in society. A bunch of major celebrities that are breaking records in the entertainment business started on social media platforms. Kate Knibbs (2013), made mention to stars like Justin Bieber who wouldn’t be anything if it weren’t for his YouTube videos that went viral and gained popularity in the very beginning of his career. Knibbs (2013) wrote, “Plenty of people have used social media to carve out niches for themselves.” Ordinary people took their talents and used social media to their advantage to be seen and heard. Another ordinary girl, Megan Amram, who is now a television writer for Parks and Recreation, was noticed on Twitter because of her humor. Knibbs (2013) makes mentioned to Amram and a few others about how their “pithy” accounts led them to stardom and fame.
It is pretty obvious that there are strategic ways to go about using social media and one will see the great impacts it could have on their lives if they take the steps to engage in the most effective ways. It is important to understand whom you are as an individual in order to show your best self on these platforms because you never know when you could be the next leader of a global company or rise to stardom over simple tweets and videos.
References
Hale, B. (2015, June 16). The History of Social Media: Social Networking Evolution! Retrieved from http://historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-media/
HOLT, D. (2016). Branding in the Age of Social Media. Harvard Business Review, 94(3), 40-50.
Knibbs, K. (2013, April 15). How social media has changed what it means to be a celebrity.Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/celebrity-social-media-anger/
Small, Z. (2017, April 5). The Importance of Social Media.Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-social-media-zachary-small/
Peters, B. (2017, February 27). Social Media Algorithms: How They Work and How to Use Them in Your Favor – Michael Stelzner. Retrieved November 19, 2017, from https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-algorithms-show-notes
Social Media Mediators 
