Social Media Metrics and Self-Worth #WOKE
There are two types of social media metrics: vanity and actionable metrics. Vanity metrics shows all the data points of a social media account but doesn’t tell much details into who is following or what content stands out the most. Actionable metrics answers those specific questions that vanity metrics lack which provides us information as to further steps we need to take in order to keep people interested and constantly interacting with our content. These two metrics are what most businesses use to manage their social media accounts.
What I’m going to be focusing on are regular people who are interested in developing their social media profiles independently. These people like to focus more on vanity metrics simply because numbers are nice to look at. Big numbers are nice to look at. It is the easiest way for people to validate their social media accounts or make them feel relevant in society when in reality, these are just numbers that doesn’t really mean much. Nowadays, it is easy for people to be convinced that the more people who follow or like their posts means that people are really love them, in turns increases their self-esteem. If what we post doesn’t get as much exposure as we wanted, automatically we think we are boring or not interesting enough and start to wonder why. Some people are really good at attracting followers and generate much more likes than others which is why some others might use this as a base or standard for their own social media account. This results in a lot of disappointment and the condemning of their own self-worth.
I actually experienced this feeling first hand quite recently with my attempt to start an Instagram account to showcase my artwork. Although it is something quite personal, I thought it would be something worth sharing.Originally, I made a new Instagram account separate from my personal one simply just to post pictures of my drawings or digital art under a penname. I was inspired by other artists’ account that are both for professional and just-for-fun work. I thought that it was cool how they were able to gain so much exposure for their artwork, so I thought why not try something like this myself? I didn’t really care about followers and likes at first because I only wanted to showcase my work that I was proud of to the public regardless of who actually stops and comment or follow. My first few posts, received more likes than I expected in such a short amount of time, which encouraged me to continue posting regularly. After a while, I started receiving less likes and previous followers started unfollowing. It was almost a shattering feeling when at first you see a certain number of people following you and the next time you check it, you lost almost half of your followers. It felt really discouraging and made me think of all the possible reasons as to why they unfollowed.
Thinking back, what was scary was how instead of enjoying what I love and my passion for art, I started caring more about followers and likes. It was not the reason why I created a new Instagram account in the first place. At one point, I started drawing just so that I can post it on Instagram to see how many people would like my post, which was actually a very different feeling from just posting because you are proud of your work and wanting others to see it.
What was happening was I started losing my original sense of pride and became insecure about my artistic skills and myself in general. It made me wonder, was it because my art was not unique enough? Or was it because I wasn’t good enough? In reality, these metrics shouldn’t be something that defines someone or their value. Of course, I know at some level that these numbers are just numbers, but it is really hard not to think about it at all when everyone around you use these numbers to define you. Bigger numbers give people a sense of superiority among others, something to show off to people even if it might be just ‘empty’ popularity. Some people might go to the extent of buying followers either to increase their online presence or to advertise themselves to other potential followers as ‘relevant’. I’m sharing this story not only because it is a very relatable scenario, but also because I wanted to show that the biggest problem is not the fact that people put so much value in their social media metrics, but the fact that they know that they should not carelessly value them yet still choose not to change.
Now, it’s not a bad thing for people to enjoy their increasing number of followers or likes but using it to dictate how you normally act and having it deviate you from your beliefs are wrong. Everyone value things differently, so social media metrics, especially vanity metrics, are not an accurate representation of what people truly think of you. What people must understand is that once they work on the things they love and enjoy to the fullest, it will definitely shine through their work and eventually others will enjoy it too.
