How to Brand Your Business the Selfie Way!
2 Years back on August 2013, the word “Selfie” became the word of the year and was added to the Oxford Dictionary. Selfies have taken the 21st century by storm. Nowadays, Selfies are not just for teens. Businesses and brands are actively using Selfies for boosting their brand’s street cred. Here is how you can make the most of this trend for improving the shrinking sales figures.
With the ever-growing magnitude of mobile marketing and the front-facing cameras of the Smartphones, selfies although slowly but have surely made a place in the social media marketing strategies of the brands. Being a small business owner you, too, must consider how selfies can help you humanize your brand.
The Power of Selfies
Selfies can be used by businesses to personalize their message and spread their words to every nook and cranny of the world. Advertising tends to be big brand oriented. The selfie take away the big brand from the core of the message and adds the human element. Isn’t that what we all crave for?
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Asking your customers to post their selfies using a brand-related hashtag works as a free marketing approach for your business. What can be better than thousands of social media users sharing their images using your products or your #brand or #company?
The Growth of Images in Marketing
It’s no secret that social media is a powerfully image-driven trend. Facebook’s reconfiguration has even made images larger and more noticeable. In Twitter also the images can be included in between 140-character tweet. Whereas Instagram is particularly image-driven social networking platform.
With everyone from Barack Obama to Ellen DeGeneres, Miley Cyrus to David Beckham getting in on the action, selfies have become a thing, and have exploded into one of the consequential social media trends over the past couple of
They are just unaware if they do something that may go outside of social standards, especially if it's for a picture. Murphy reveals that selfie takers are insecure and are looking for validation from their peers; however their insecurities are masked over by their confidence. The higher number of likes they get, the more confident they feel. Murphy further states that more people are getting cosmetic surgery due to being discouraged when looking at their selfies but with all the applications that can be used to alter one’s features it isn't hard to feel that way. The apps can make your skin clear and teeth
I believe the younger generation lets selfies and other forms of social media affect them by creating dishonest performance from who they truly are. The ones who are not affected by this and seem to present their true identities in most cases is the older generation. Social media has become an everyday thing for teenagers. They are constantly on the lookout for what new trends are going on and what they can do to get in on this trend. For example, in my past experiences I have seen friends as well as other people from school that see something popular on social media such as clothes and buy them to just try and fit in on this trend. They would post selfies with their outfit of the popular clothes to fit in and get the recognition of others, but when all this seemed to not be so popular anymore and people would jump on something new they would not wear it anymore and try to sell it. This comes to show that teenagers focus so much on social media that they distance themselves from their true image to try and fit in with what’s
I believe that most of the pictures on Instagram are not really all that intimate. Instagram also provides the option to report a picture if it is too “intimate.” Titlow also points out that girls post pictures laying in bed and boys post pictures of themselves shirtless in front of a mirror. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. A girl laying in bed does not mean she is trying to get all of the guy’s attention and a boy standing in front of a mirror shirtless does not mean he is trying to show off or reveal more of his body than he should. The pictures that people post on Instagram is how they express themselves and who are we to
A selfie is a picture that you take of yourself especially by using the front camera of your smartphone ("Selfie"). The word was added to the dictionary in 2013 and originates from Australia. A selfie can be used to relive moments with someone but is mostly used for attention. There are people who post more than one selfie a day and that is outrageous. It is one of the most narcissistic acts created because there are people who spend hours a day taking selfies and don 't do anything productive instead. Majority of children know how to take selfies but not tie their shoes. It 's a trend that will never have an end. If anything the trend evolves more each day with gadgets to help take better selfies. There are tools to create a great selfie such as selfie sticks and selfie timers. There are apps to take selfies even if your phone comes with a camera application which is the most logical location on which to take a selfie. The worst selfie application I have seen to this day is the one where it appears that you were wearing make up or have a different hairstyle. The reason why are the worst because some people take it to an extreme level where they hide all of their imperfections and look like a completely different person. I have aunts who take too much advantage of those applications and end up looking as if they belonged in a cartoon. I have met many people from
It is foolish to immediately accept that the reasoning for a posted selfie is simply one’s arrogant display of their huge ego. The selfie viewer should ask themselves, as a human being, do they “[…] want to be valued, appreciated, and included in the groups that matter to [them]” (Rutledge)? Though these are quite basic humanistic desires, many dismiss any of these possibilities as a reason for why an individual could be posting a selfie. In Emily Cook’s view, “generally, especially with Instagram, there’s a real feel-good attitude towards selfies, and as vain as it may be, you know that if you’re not feeling great, there’s someone who will ‘like’ your photo and tell you you’re pretty” (BBC). In other words, Cook feels selfies evoke confidence. This innate desire for approval is also shown through a 100,000 person, decade long study. According to the O.C. Tanner Institute and Healthstream throughout the U.S. and Canada, “[…] 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving” (Sturt and Nordstrom). Through this shocking point made by Sturt and Nordstrom, one can see how crucial the human desire to be appreciated is. Though one may question the selfie’s approach to approval, methods in which a person may gain confidence compared to others nontraditional but harmless ways shouldn’t
There you are holding your camera an arm’s length away from your face, posing in the most flattering position to capture your best angle. There you are taking a photo of yourself to share with all of your Facebook friends. Taking a self-portrait photo, also known as a selfie, is something almost everyone has done in this new generation. This action is typically done without a second thought. In Alex Williams’ article “Here I Am Taking My Own Picture” that second thought is provoked through exploring the quickly spreading trend of self-portrait photography. In the article while Williams’ provides interesting examples on a changing generation as this trend progresses through social media and modern technology; Williams also leaves something to be desired within the article due to a lack of direction in the author’s stance on the topic.
Marketing through Social Media (Exploratory Essay) Throughout the ages there have been many intriguing ways that businesses have portrayed their product or services for accessibility. Recently, businesses have been researching how to market the businesses product through the World Wide Web. With websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, it started becoming popular within the past 20 Years. People have started to rely heavily on the internet over the past decade, whether it be for searching for information on products or people.
Selfie-Loathing: Here’s Why Instagram Is Even More Depressing than Facebook. Slate Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/instagram_and_self_esteem_why_the_photo_sharing_network_is_even_more_depressing.html
Here you will learn how to establish and grow your brand on Instagram. Some businesses have been using Instagram for years without success because they were unfocused, focused on the wrong thing, or were alienating their core consumer. Here are ten tips to help small businesses, entrepreneurs and new starters make a positive splash on Instagram.
Instagram is one of the best and prominent marketing platform that help businesses to spread out their word across the world with the means of pictures. Everyday more than 75 million pics/posts are uploaded in Instagram, and that 's why it has turned as a world of attention and traffic as well. If used Instagram smartly and savvy, it can help you reap attention which can be effectively used and exploited for the business.
People use selfies for releasing their desire of narcissism. It appears snapping the perfect photo has become more important than truly enjoying memorable moments in life; which could be the reason narcissism has risen with the popularity of social media. The search giant, which uses machine learning software to add labels to images uploaded to its Google Photos application, analyzed how many of those were selfies. More than 200 million people upload images to the application each month. A staggering 24 billion selfies were uploaded to Google's Photos application in the past year. A blog post by Google Blog the author said, “A year ago, we introduced Google Photos with one mission – to be a home for all your photos and videos organized and brought to life so that you can share and save what matters.” “You've collectively freed up 13.7 petabytes of storage on your devices – it would take 424 years to swipe through that many photos.” “We've also applied two trillion labels, and 24 billion of those have been for selfies.” Yet this is only likely to be a fraction of the true number of self-portraits snapped by smartphone users in 2015 – Google only counted images uploaded to its Photos app. It will not include selfies kept on Apple's iCloud, posted to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and
Today 's generation is all about social media. It is the new way to have instant connection to thousands all over the world. Today 's company are now doing less traditional television, radio, and print advertisement and more promotion via Twitter, Facebook and/or Instagram. Companies are invested in getting famous people to post pictures or tweet about their products, knowing that, one person can connect with millions with just one post. Over half of the world has access to social media, making them great consumers. Social media benefit marketing by giving the companies the opportunity to learn their audience/consumers, having access to instant feedback and bring awareness to here product.
It mirrors how we are increasingly becoming an entrepreneurial society each day. Companies nowadays market and promote their products with ease. If you log into instagram you will find posted photos of various products or logos of different brand names. Survey has shown that an approximated 40% of brands use instagram for marketing (social media examiner, 2014).
According to Diamond 2008, social media marketing is marketing that concentrates on people and not products. The company can represent the product through a promotional tool if possible, all that really matters is the customer’s feedback. Marketers are scared about social media marketing because people provide and control the content posted, therefore negative word of mouth can be said about the brand which can spread worldwide in the twinkle of an eye. Social media does not only help companies and brands expand or create awareness, it also influences consumer behavior in terms of gathering information, purchasing decisions, opinions, attitudes and brand evaluation. Marketers need to post topics that will create great conversations with consumers using the platform.
Have you ever wondered why our selfies are so much better than yours? (Visual Aid)