Social Media: Purposes and Uses (2)

Social Media: Purposes and Uses (2)

Personal bs Profesional

On a personal level, social media is used by individuals to document aspects of their day to day lives. Essentially, it’s a breeding ground for vanity.

There is a degree to which there is a cross-over between personal and professional - in which people use their social media accounts to further their own business interests. This could be n existing celebrity, through increasingly, the lines are becoming blurred.

James Charles - Celebrity Vlogger

How people make money off YouTube

People watch billions of hours of YouTube a day - YouTube is now the second largest search engine

Videos tend to be the most profitable among ad formats with the average video cpm rates hovering  between $5 to $30 for viewing coming in from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia - This rate depends on other factors like ad format, geographical location and also whether the viewers see the ad on an embedded video or directly over youtube 

Certain niches in YouTube make it easier to gain followers and therefore more money - Successful niches:

• Gaming
• Lifehacks
• Celebrity gossip
• News
• Top [x] list

etc

Research keywords specific to your niche to hit the SEO metrics 

Youtube partner program - First step before monetising videos. This allows YouTubers to be paid through views and advertisements served on their page - You have to have at least 4000 watch hours in the past 12 months and 1000 subscribers to be eligible. Youtube will then let you know when you have been approved. The money is made through advertisements. There are two types: CPM (cost per thousand views) and CPC (cost per click). If the advertisement is CPM, that means the viewer of your YouTube video must watch the ad for longer than 30 seconds (or if it’s a short video, for at least half the advertisement). Think about your YouTube watching habits and you’ll know this is more unlikely than it sounds. If it’s a CPC advertisement, then you get paid based on how many viewers click on the ads surrounding your video.

How has Kim Kardashian used Instagram, and other social media sites, to her advantage?

She promotes her own brands (SKIMS, KKW FRAGRANCE) but also makes money off promoting other peoples brands

$200,000 per post for an ad

Kim Kardashian mad $500,000 from a single sponsored Instagram post in 2015 (comparison is that the president makes $400,000 yearly)

Kardashian West has turned her massive social media following into a fortune of £350 million, according to Forbes

What are the current statistics for the number of followers she has acquired

Instagram - 267 Million

Twitter - 70.7 Million

TikTok - 952.9 Thousand

How do you account for her popularity

Her mum (Kris Jenner) made her family the centre of a reality TV show - look into ‘celebrities’ lives

Once they started getting attention, they started making their own businesses

Though her career began on reality TV, Kim Kardashian is now one of the most influential people on social media. She was described as a “pop culture phenomenon” by Vogue and ranked on Times 2015 less of influential people

Turn the negative into opportunity - Infamous intimate video of her and her ex-boyfriend spread across the interned

The Donald

Ordinarily, the discourse of US presidents is the filtered through the public after careful speech writing from spin doctors. Not so with the Donald, who regularly takes to social media - Specifically, Twitter - to say his views.

The Hierarchy of Needs

So, why do people use social media?

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) pyramid is a useful model, which addresses human needs that exist beyond basic survival

It’s not specific to media, and has been used and developed across a range of different subjects and ideas. Its principle can be usefully applied to social media 

Self-actualisation: Desire to become the most that one can be

Esteem: respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom

Love and belonging: friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection

Safety needs: personal security, employment, resources, health, property

Physiological   needs: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction

Well.com

• 1st ‘Virtual Community’
• Worlds most influential online community
• Started in 1985
• Founders of Craigslist 
• Located in California

Why instagram is the worst social media for mental health

• Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) survey claims, instagram is the worst social media for mental health -  based on 15,000 teens and young adults
• Creating high levels of Anxiety, Depression, Bullying and FOMO (fear of missing out)
• YouTube was the only platform with positive results
• Snapchat and Instagram
• Positive: self identity, self expression, community building, emotional support

LinkedIn

• A business-orientated service that allows users to share online CV profiles in order to communicate with other business professionals and gain employment
• Formed in 2002, it’s one of the earliest networking sites that offered users the ability to communicate for employment and career progression
• Its regularly used as a means of crowdsourcing personnel for projects, and dedicated websites such as www.crowdsourcing.org work as a collective hub for projects that require skills and experience
• Crowdsourcing - When media producers use online technologies, such as social media, to ask for staff or volunteers who gave gas a skillset to work on a project

Social TV

Many media institutions - especially television - encourage audiences to use social media. Watching television is increasingly becoming integrated with social networking via smart TV and black box devices

For example, The X Factor is fully integrated with love Twitter feeds throughout the show. This encourages participation, and can also be used by media producers to measure the impact of participation

What is the social media channel	What are the main ways in which they are able to distribute content to audiences	Why is it lesser known BUT just as important
Pinterest	Gives you content such as websites, photos, drawings, step by steps etc according to your interests. Pinterest tracks your interests based on previous pins saved to your boards and gives you similar pins.	Whilst it may not be the biggest social media platform, the basis still stays the same as most of the rest of them, sharing content. People upload content, and others can save them to boards whether it be for inspiration, event planning, creative purposes etc
Tumblr	Tumblr lets users share almost anything; photos, videos, web addresses, music and their thoughts in essentially an online public blog. People can then see this content and interest by ‘noting it’ which then adds it onto your blog, then they can recommend you blogs more related to your interests	It's important as it creates communities for niche audiences no matter the interest. People are able to share their ideas, art, videos and find people with interests which are similar to theirs. You then can also private message people and talk about said interests.
Flickr	Flickr is an online photo management application where you can also share your works.
Vimeo