It’s all fake

6

November

2015

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Recently a 19-year old Australian model Essena O’Neill stopped with social media. She didn’t just quit she also confessed that it’s all fake and that it makes people depressive. She used to earn 2000 dollars per photo but it wasn’t everything that she wanted.

This is what she said

”I had everything, but i have never felt so miserable in my entire life. Everything I did was about likers and followers”

She changed her Instagram captions now with some real life thoughts that occured during the making of the pictures.

Op haar Instagram-account plaatste Essena ontnuchterend commentaar bij haar foto's.

Her action became a huge hit on social media and was seen on almost every social media platform.

This begs a lot of questions: Does social media make people miserable about themselves? Should social media be more safer for people with insecurity issues?

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http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/11/03/dit-is-wat-een-leven-als-instagram-ster-met-je-kan-doen

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You mad, bro?

4

November

2015

No ratings yet.

We all have experienced it, or have seen it at least… the internet troll. The one on Youtube that comments on every artist’s videoclip with: Justin Bieber is better than this stupid -insert artist here- The one that had to instigate a fight, what was just a meaningless disagreement about the birds in Mexico. The one that makes a fake account just to mess with people and many more examples of what we now call the Internet troll.

Since social media has been a household phenomenon, these so called ”trolls” are everywhere. On YouTube, Instagram, Tinder, Facebook etc.

An example of this occured in 2014. A 14-year old girl allegedly tweeted this message to the company American Airline.

Twitter Teen 1

Little did she know that, not everyone thought that this was a little joke she was making.

Twitter Teen 2

What Sarah thought was supposed to be an (untasteful) joke, turnt into a serious matter. Soon the police got involved and Sarah learned her lesson.

This is an example of person who is joking around on the internet. Though, joking around on the internet is not a new thing, there are boundaries.

Another example of trolling on the internet is the Dutch internet phenomenon called ”Bangalijst” where people put list of young girls on the internet who may or may not have been sexually active. These lists were spread around Twitter, emotionally harming young girls everywhere and making Dutch parents angry.

Another much recent example is when a football player of the Dutch footballteam posted a photo with some of his teammates. Nobody expected the amount of racially offensive jokes that people posted like: ” All of you are Black Petes” and FC Monkey.

There are many more of these examples and still happening everyday.  Why do people feel the need to say nasty comments about people? Why do people feel the need to bully people on the internet and why do people feel the need to bring someone else down?

An article by Jesse Fox explains why people feel the need to bully someone on social media. Here she gives 8 reasons why:

  1. Anonymity
    Some people have the tendency to believe that they can say anything online and can get away with it. People make up usernames that aren’t linked to their real life so they basically have the feeling that they aren’t being watched cause their identity on the internet is not known.
  2. Perceived Obscurity
    Though, websites like Facebook usually do have your real name, people seem to think that there is still a sense of obscurity/anonymity. People seem to think that their friends or family on Facebook won’t pay attention to all things that he/she posts on other pages.
  3. Perceived Majority Status
    When people think they are in the majority of a certain statement/phenomenen/etc. they will more freely express their opinions about a certain topic.
  4. Social Identity Salience
    Some people behave differently on social media then in real life. Julia might be very shy when she is with you in class, but might me one of the most offensive football hooligan. This is called deindividuation
  5. Surrounded by friends
    On sites like Facebook, you are most definitely surrounded by friends and family. People seem to have a sense of security when you share your opinions about a certain topic when you are ”surrounded by people you know”
  6. Desensitization
    Over time, we may get desensitized to the online environment. Whereas once we would have thought about the consequences of what we posted, now we just spout without thinking about it. We may see so many nasty comments that we think making one ourselves is no big deal.
  7. Personality Traits
    Some people are just outspoken by nature and have no sense of empathy. Other tend to believe that they are morally right than others.
  8. Perceived lack of consequences
    Some people just think that because it’s on social media, nothing wil happen and there will be no consequences. Those people are wrong, cause the Internet is not going anywhere and even know when you delete something, somehow it will always be traceable.

What do you guys think? Why do people tend to behave differently on social media than in real life? What goes on in the mind of these ”so called trolls”? Leave a comment 🙂

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Rich people want your money on social media

1

November

2015

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Kickstarter is a American crowdfunding website where projects can be financed. It’s a useful social media if someone wants to develop a project but is not possible to because of the lack of money. If a student wants to make a short film he can start a Kickstarter account and try to gather money by letting other people donate some money. This way the poor student can achieve his dream of making a film.

It is ofcourse very important to have a significant amount of followers or an attractive cause. Celebrities also use kickstarter to develop their personal projects. An example is the actor Zach Braff from Scrubs who wanted to direct a movie called ”Wish you were here”. For this movie he needed 2 million dollars for the production and achieved his goal in 3 days with Kickstarter.

Another example is the girlgroup TLC. This group was huge in the 90’s and very popular. Since 2003 they haven’t released any music but as of January 2015 they asked their fans on social media to contribute and donate money for their final album. They needed 150.000 dollars and achieved their goal in three days.

A lot of people seem to think that this is a very selfish way to finance your project via kickstarter. Especially when celebrities do it. Celebrities ask their fans to donate money on their social media pages like Twitter and/or Facebook.

Zach Braff has a net worth of 22 million dollars and the girlgroup TLC has sold over 60 million albums worldwide. People ask why they need their fans to finance their projects while they don’t seem to have any money problems. How is that?

A news article by Angela Watercutter explains why people get annoyed at celebrities on kickstarter.In this article she explains that people think you have a lot of money they’re going to ask why you’re asking them for more. And she explains that there will always be backlash.

What do you guys think? Do you think celebrities should use kickstarters or should they just finance their projects themselves? Leave a comment 😉

Why People Get Annoyed at Celebrities on Kickstarter (And Why They Probably Shouldn’t)

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Billboards vs. Facebook Ads

24

September

2015

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The article from Hoffman, D.L. and Fodor, M. (2010) discusses if companies are able to measure their ‘’return of investment’’ of social media marketing. In the article they discussed some social media objectives and how you can use those objectives as a measurement of the effectiveness of a companies’ social media effort. I found these very interesting cause the authors categorized it into three objectives (brand awareness, brand engagement and word of mouth) and explained how a companies’ social efforts could be measured. So this article suggests that there are a lot of ways different kinds of companies can use different kinds of applications  to measure their social media efforts.

After reading this article you get a better perspective on why social media marketing is better nowadays. But is it always better? What are the disadvantages of social media marketing?

Based on these points, I searched for an article that gave some insight about the disadvantages of social media marketing. I found a newspaper article that discussed a couple of disadvantages of using social media as a marketing tool. They started with the point that the social media approach takes a lot of time and commitment. A small nail-salon might encounter difficulties if they want to engage with customers on their social media page, cause they would have to keep satisfying the need of customers online on their Facebook page while also managing the nail salon. A bigger company like Apple most definitely has a whole department that only deals with social media advertising so they might encounter less problems. Another disadvantage of the social media approach is that it might feel intrusive to some people. Sometimes when I shop online and put something in my online shopping cart I see an ad on Facebook that gives me the exact same product that I put on my shopping cart. Many people see this as a violation of their privacy and this might give the company a bad image. Ads on television or radio might be annoying, but they don’t feel intrusive as ads on Facebook or LinkedIn. Another drawback of this approach is the fact that it doesn’t acquire new customers as fast as people might think. Of course it attracts loyal customers very easily, but new customers might not even know about the ads of a brand on social media. For example, I like the brand Nike so I follow it on every social media platform but my good friend Jason is more of an Adidas guy so he doesn’t follow Nike whatsoever. Let’s say that ,even though he really likes Adidas, he wanted new Nike sneakers but they are not available in the Netherlands yet. If Nike would put an advertisement on their social media platforms about new sneakers in the Netherlands, Jason would not even be aware of this cause he doesn’t actively follow those social media pages. But the chances might be bigger if he sees a random advertisement on the television (where you can’t actively select which brand you’re able to follow) (Abrons, R., 2011).

An (in my opinion) important point is the lack of feedback control with the social media approach. A news article from Miranda Brookins (Demand Media, 2011) gave the argument that if a customer had a negative experience with a brand, he might compelled to share this experience on the social media page of that company which can activate negative word of mouth.

So this begs the question, should companies ALWAYS advertise digitally or should they find a balance in digital and traditional advertising? What works best for what company? Is traditional advertising dead? What do you guys think? Leave a comment 😉

References

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