Assignment #1

In this assignment, I will tell about my most familiar and most unfamiliar social media tools or platforms. 

I would have to say that a blog is my most familiar social media platform. I founded my own, personal blog in 2011 and since then have written it, very infrequently at first and more frequently for several years. My personal blog has had up to 25 000 unique readers in some months and June 2020 it will become one of Vaikuttajamedia, a finnish media house's, contracted blogs. It is a huge stepping stone for my blog, and for myself, as I started to blog without even having the courage to tell of my blog to anyone. 

My personal blog, Colour Outside the Lines, in May 2020. 

My most familiar social media platform

I have, however, chosen Instagram to be my most familiar social media platform, as I have used the service since 2013 and have been using it in personal branding from 2018. 

When Instagram, referred commonly as IG, launched in October 2010, it was a social media platform where you could follow your friends and post pictures. The pictures were usually a mash of pixels which means the quality of the pictures was not good as the smart phones were not so highly developed yet. 

The pictures were usually posted without caption and people did not have a biography in their profile. 

Not many would have believed then that Instagram would become the 4th most dowdloaded mobile app of the 2010s. 

In 2020, Instagram has become a highly respected social media platform with over 1 billion registered users of which over 500 million users use the app daily. People follow celebrities and nobody's with an interesting Instagram feed. You can now become instafamous overnight. 

Instagram was purchased in 2012 by Facebook for a billion dollars.  

As Instagram still is a photo and video-sharing social media platform, it is very visual and great content needs to be high quality. Instagram is widely used by professional photographers as a portfolio of some kind as it is easy to reach millions of people with high quality contect. One of the most popular finnish Instagram accounts is Konsta Punkka with 1,3 million followers. Punkka publishes mostly capturing pictures of wildlife and has worked with companies such as National Geographic and Mercedes Benz. Punkka founded his Instagram aacount after a bet with his friend that he would get more likes with a picture of a squirrel than his friend got with his gym selfie. And he did. Now his account is 5th followed finnish account in Instagram. 

My personal following is fairly small at 2500 followers. I refer to myself as an influencer since I have a blog and an Instagram account which I update frequently, I do collaborations and I am trying to grow my channels to meet my needs as a professional influencer one day. 

There is, however, a growing demand of smaller accounts with the following of 1000 to 10 000 and these accounts are called micro-influencers. Companies are ready to collaborate with micro-influencers as they usually have a dedicated follower community which believe in the products the micro-influencer shows them. 

My personal(and professional) Instagram account in May 2020. 

Instagram's most popular accounts, meaning the ones with most followers, are celebrities of other are. The most popular account, right after Instagram's own profile (as of March 2020), is Christiano Ronaldo with 209,25 million followers. 

The highest ranking accounts make some serious money with what they post to Instagram. Kylie Jenner, who in March 2020 was the 5th most followed person in Instagram, can earn up to 1.26 million dollar with just one picture. 

Because of Instagram's algorithm, your personal first page only shows you content Instagram thinks you will like instead of all the posts from all the accounts you follow. This results in you probably not seeing most of some accounts published posts. 

Also because of the algorithm, the amount of likes the pictures receive is smaller than it used to be. The reacts (comments and likes) are called engagement and the higher your engagement rate is, the better. Kylie Jenner for example, has 177,5 million followers and her engagement rate is 3,36%. This means she get approximately 5,9 million likes and 40 000 comments per picture.

As a micro-influencer myself, I have an engagement rate of 10.55%. It is considered to bbe fairly good as accounts with 1000 to 5000 followers usually have an engagement rate of 5.6%. 

The engagement rate is relevant only when considering commercial content in Instagram as the engagement rate and amount of followers usually define how much companies are willing to pay to the influencer. I earn approximately 200 euros for collaborations so I am far from Kylie Jenner's paycheck. 

I think Ikea is very good example of well designed content in Instagram. Ikea, a swedish furniture company, has stores in 52 countries. Many of them have individual Instagram accounts and in Finland, at least Kuopio's Ikea has it's own individual account.

Ikea is active in sharing pictures to both feed and stories. The account shares pictures from their followers which have been tagged with Ikea in them and now that the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the buyer's lives, Ikea employees have made fun videos to the stories feature to entertain their followers. 

Ikea keeps their Instagram feed light and enjoyable for the viewer which is a very important thing as that is what people are after when logging into Instagram. 

When looking for bad examples of brand action in Instagram, one that comes to mind are grainy and poorly lighted pictures. It is crucial to have good quality pictures so people stop scrolling down and stop to look at your picture. 

In Instagram, it is important to post eye catching content which people will remember. In order to do that, the company needs to be fairly active and when creating the account, they should post daily to stay in mind's of the potential customers. 

My most unfamiliar social media platform

As my most unfamiliar social media platform I chose LinkedIn.

I have created an account as a part of my studies but I am not as familiar with the use of the platform as I would like to be. I don't know how to best use it to my advantage.

It is my goal to learn to use it properly this summer since I need to start looking for a professional intern position in order to graduate.

My profile is in English as I am studying an international degree but I am looking into the possibility of having the profile in two language. I have understood it is possible to do that. 

My personal (and professional) LinkedIn profile. 

LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and is a platform for professional networking. It has a website and a mobile app available. 

In LinkedIn, the registered users can create a personal profile with their own professional information and it acts as a digital resume. Companies also have profiles with job openings.

It is possible to make job alerts and get notifications of job opportunities that match your credentials. LinkedIn has over 690 million registered users and works in more than 200 countries so the job opportunities are endless for those who are ready to move anywhere in the world for work.

Ikea has a very impressive presence also in LinkedIn. They post job opportunities and show employees in their work environment. They are active which means they must have a good public relations department in their company. 

I suppose it is important to be very active in LinkedIn, too, to get as many possibilities as possible and to get employers to notice you. It is also have a very clear profile. It should have all the information of your professional and educational backgroud, have a professional profile picture and show you as a potential employee. If your profile doesn't check these boxes, the possible employers will probably skip your profile. 

Summary

As an micro-influencer and an international business student focusing on marketing, my field of studies differ from each other very little. I have found my studies to support the knowledge and know-how I already have. 

People now have what they call instablogs which are like personal blogs but only in Instagram. The captions are longer with a story in them and most of them have a call-to-action in the very beginning of the post or at the end with a question to the reader. 

These instablogs have become massively popular and companies now see them as potential influencers for their products. However, because anyone can be an influencer today, the companies are more reluctant to pay actual money to these micro-influencers and small accounts are usually willing to work for only the products as their pay. 

It would be in everyone's best interest if everyone stopped working without pay. That way companies would know the real value of influencers and would also respect it more.  

Reference links are inserted in the text.