Deadass Humans of New York b

For those of you don’t know what Humans of New York is, it’s a Instagram/Blog behemoth that posts pictures of people (usually in New York) with captions of real responses the subjects give to questions.

HONY does something special in the sense that they have established a reputation for putting out Planned content that even if they post something that is Canned, they can get away with it.

Take this post for example… The caption is something that could have easily been thought of and generated for this exact post. Although there is no proof that they do this, it really makes one think.

What HONY does is so unique in the sense that their planned content allows for a much bigger and engaged community. I could imagine living in New York and keeping my eye out for someone with a camera for the off chance that they are with HONY. Their content generates a it’s own sense of engagement in the sense that in the comment section of each picture, users speak to one another on the subject of the photo and or caption. HONY does not even need to engage these users directly, their content allows for the audience to answer to each other and discuss.

This ultimately allows for HONY to have one of the best and biggest Social Media Wins, they have created a community in which people speak to eachother to feel connected to HONY. This is incredibly interesting, it makes one think can this formula be replicated?

Can say a random fast food chain achieve the same level of engagement as HONY using their recipe? If not… why?

I think it’s due to the simple fact that the audience can tell when content is canned or planned. For me personally reading the tweets of Taco Bell or any other fast food twitter account seems canned. Even if they are responding to an individual, the responses seem artificial in a way. What I think HONY does best is it puts an identity to each one of it’s posts.

So if i comment on a HONY picture i feel as if i am speaking to the person in the picture even when I’m not as opposed to tweeting at Taco Bell a huge multi million dollar enterprise.