Social Media Metrics Influence and the Value of Content: An Anecdote
In the social media dominated age we live in virtually everyone has the ability to bring a piece of themselves to it and share their ideas. Content creation has become democratized as the tools available to make the creation of content possible have become increasingly more available to the public. Anyone can become a content creator and anyone can express their opinions, critique, praise, or recommend to others the content at hand. It is the viewers inputs and attention to the content that has the power to influence the direction, format, subjects, etc of the content and perhaps the mindset of the content creator. With the ability for content creators to monitor the status of their content through social media metrics, they can assess the metrics and readjust their focus or make changes to their creations wherever needed based on the data presented to them. Some situations may cause content creators to make changes based on negative metrics and viewer input but the question at hand is how much power do these metrics have in influencing the content creators? What follows is an anecdote of my personal position on the subject of the influence and effects of social media metrics.
While social media metrics can alter the course of content creation either moderately or drastically, this is not the case with many content creators. There are a variety of content creators on various social media platforms that stay true to their content and defend the artistic value of their content and the work that goes into it. For example one YouTuber that I have been aware of for many years now’s content has gone through very little content and/or personality changes. His username is WhiteBoy7thst and he runs a gaming channel. Although he has not gained a significant amount of subscribers in recent times, he still has maintained a decent following and still generates content his fans continue to watch and enjoy. It is clear in this case that social media metrics did not have a great influence in regards to his content creation. He hasn’t seen any significant growth for quite sometime however he still averages a range of views typically over 100,000 on many of his videos. I used to dabble in filmmaking myself and creating content on YouTube myself and can relate to the status of WhiteBoy7thst in terms of staying true to the content you create for the sake of making your art. In days of when I once was a content creator, I always carried out the mindset of making content for art’s sake. Whenever I would think of an idea for a film or short video, I would proceed to carry out the process of making it a reality without taking into consideration of what type of content I create generates the most popularity and adjusting my focus based on those metrics. Based on how I go about creating content, I determine that social media metrics have little to no affect on my sense of self. My general philosophy when it comes to creating content and bring ideas to reality is that if your audience enjoys it for what it is and what you do, then it is all worthwhile.
Sometimes the understanding of value in one’s creations can be altered in a negative or positive way based off social media metrics. Either the least popular series of videos or the small amount of views one may receive on a video that he/she is personally proud of can distort the understanding of value. In my case however, I don’t like to let what data dictate the value of content I create. Each project that I create is typically drawn from my own inspirations, ideas, sense of story, etc that trump what statistics may show. I suppose that this is due to a deep-rooted sense in creation and artistic value in content that I like to create.
