Internet marketing has evolved over the years with blogging spearheaded the method of success. Over the years, the medium becomes saturated with information. It has expanded to the various platform; from simple text to colorful images. Also, next, you know, you have short stories of “someone” else life at the tip of your finger. We call ourselves the people of social media.
People are spending more time on social media
Do you know that the average person spends around 2 hours of his/her time on social media daily? Advertising companies have since focused on producing more contents and ads to increase the dwell time of its viewer on their phone.
Statistics show that more people are focusing on the Instagram daily rather than on any other social media. Thus, advertising has followed suit by extending its arms and legs to the next platform where the traffics are significant.
Social Media: The Capitalist's Tool
Take Facebook for instance. The advertisement is popping up everywhere whenever you browse through your feed. Your past searches on Amazon or eBay are constantly showing up at the sidebar of your Facebook feeds. Always reminding you about the stuff that you’d wish you had.
As you stay long enough on your phone, your view time on an ad increases proportionally. What was once a platform for sharing thoughts and making friends has been monetized by the great capitalism. We don’t blame social media for monetizing its platform, but what follows is the consequence of such action.
Instagram Over Facebook
On the other hand, we have Instagram that allows us to share photos and short stories of our memories to whomever we want. Pictures are often more compelling than personal status, which is why Facebook has bought it out of various reasons.
Aside from its core purpose of sharing memories, it has also become a source of entertainment and lifestyle update to many of us.
While there are people who strive to share good contents to entertain others, some endorse a brand only because they have sponsorship. It became a source of income to sustain their lifestyle. – Through promoting products.
Social Media's exploitation
This begs the question: Are Instagrammers real?
There is no wrong if the intentions are good. However, what if the product turns out to be bad? Did they try out the product before recommending it to their followers?
Would they be willing to risk losing their sponsorship to remain truthful to their followers?
Previously, there was no restriction on how a person chose to endorse a brand. As there are loopholes, it is often being exploited by the unscrupulous business entity to increase its “followers”. It has led to multiple complications that affect the community including falsifying stories to gain the actual viewer’s sympathy.
Building a barrier to stop scammers
Although countermeasures were taken to stop these activities by controlling the content; e.g., tagging a post as sponsored, there are still posts that violate the rule that gone unnoticed.
What can we do to overcome such problems? To differentiate the truth from the lies that scammers are feeding us daily? Browsing through social media has become part of our activity on a daily basis. Almost everyone is vulnerable to some scamming activities.
Ignorance is not bliss. Self-education is a must, and we must be aware of the decisions we made.
The next time we ought to purchase something, think twice. Decide if that is what we needed instead of what we wanted.
What do you think about social media nowadays? Do you think that it has influenced your buying decisions? Let us know by commenting below.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://techiebunch.com/iot/people-social-media-intentions-real/