Are Social Media Metrics Ruining Lives?
Social media plays a crucial role in so many aspects of society. Whether its marketing a brand/company or trying to show everyone how “great” your life is. As these platforms grow society has begun to rely not only on the confidence boosts it gives us but on the analytics we receive from the platforms. Now that social media has become a career path that can make you an obnoxious amount of money the analytics mean more now than they have ever before. This has caused a dependence within society for high content performance and anything less than is looked down on.
I believe that tracking social media metrics has a negative effect on self-worth. Let’s say a blogger posts two posts one is a picture of her on a tropical beach that’s been photo shopped to the max and the other is her make up free in sweats having a chill day. The photo shopped version is more than likely to have higher metrics across all platforms it was posted on compared to the makeup free non-edited photo. Like any normal person you become insecure because people liked a fabricated version more than an authentic version. I can vouch for this because I just switched my personal Instagram to a business Instagram. I find myself looking at the metrics and overanalyzing my posts. If my posts are not performing as well as some of them you begin to get that feeling of being good enough. I feel like that feeling is severely intensified for influencers because their career rides on how many people their content can reach.
Metrics are changing the overall understanding of value because people no longer post what they are passionate about, they post what they believe will perform better throughout the platforms. To me it’s taking away the authenticity of these platforms because you are no longer seeing what the person is passionate about, you’re seeing content that the person posting thinks you wants to see. On the other hand, when thinking about how companies use social media metrics it could be a positive thing. If your company’s metrics are continuing to increase you are gaining exposure and potentially customers or clients. Either way though metrics have caused people to look for quantity and not quality.
But then there is the scenario that you are employed by a company to run their social media platforms. In that case social media metrics not only show the company’s performance on social media but it also shows your performance as an employee. Since this is such a new career field you have to value the social media metrics because it shows that you are taking your job seriously.
When it comes to valuing these metrics, there are some negative consequences. One being that people no longer value how good or bad the quality of their content is they only value how well it performed. It is important a post performs well because it’s likely that your followers will increase, which is every active user of social media’s goal. Another negative consequence it that your post performance can affect your mood and self-worth. Poor performance can cause you to begin to second guess yourself or company or it could create a feeling of not being good enough, which in a lot of ways can cause a downhill spiral because you begin to lose motivation for something you were once passionate about. Lastly there is the fact that the performance can have a direct impact on the success you have in the workplace. If your job is to manage the social media of a company the metrics directly impact you and the success you are having in that position with in a company. More importantly I think its import to not depend on the metrics all of the time. If you put passion and effort into something the results will show in the long run.
