#socialmediaprivilege
Social media heavyweights need to learn to #checktheirprivilege when they talk about social media strategy.
Todays lesson: major brands with hundreds of thousands of followers are sitting on years of brand recognition and institutional support, you can’t equate your social media success with theirs.
“Going viral” is not an effective way to build a successful brand or business. But apparently it’s the only answer to how to build a successful social media strategy. That is why social media managers who advise brands on Facebook on how to grow their following are being disingenuous.
Now I don’t mean viral in the sense of garnering millions of views. I mean viral in the sense of getting a single person to organically share your article without any prompting (like how my dad shares everything I do — Thanks dad!). That’s because when you manage a Facebook page that gets zero shares per month, a single share is a 100 percent increase. If that’s not the definition of viral for a niche Facebook page with insignificant engagement, I don’t know what is.
And sharing is what makes virality according to viral video juggernaut UpWorthy (emphasis theirs):
Upworthy posts don’t go viral because people click — Upworthy posts go viral because people share.
But what about the attributes that make something shareable? These prescriptions for finding virality by the Columbia Journalism Review apply to a single share or thousands (emphasis mine):
“What makes something go viral?”…Emotional pull. LOL factor. Cuteness. Shocking statistics. Breaking news. A headline that’s been rewritten 25 times and systematically tested for clickability…Researchers and data analysts have found that we like to click and share things that make us feel something, teach us something, make us think we’re part of the zeitgeist. And media companies are investing a lot of resources in trying to nail down a specific formula.
But you’ll never be able to nail down a specific formula because unlike our universe, Facebook is governed by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent supreme being who can change the rules of existence at will. The scientific method does not exist on Facebook. Combining two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen will not always make water.
If virality is sharing and people share things for reasons NO ONE ACTUALLY KNOWS, then the only way to grow a Facebook following is chance. And the more privilege you have starting off, the easier it is to win.
So, major brands who already have hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook or publish tens of pieces of content per day are being disingenuous when they advise small-time Facebook managers to grow their Facebook following without serving a purpose for their audience. Gimmicks that try to play on Facebook’s algorithm must come after quality content.
If your brand is on Facebook to gain followers first and provide something second, then you’re relying on virality as your business strategy. You’re not providing a product, you’re gaming people for likes for nothing in exchange.
