How do Instagram and Twitter influence society?
Politics, Lifestyle, Consumerism
30/12/2018
inFLUENCE OF INSTAGRAM IN FEMALE BODY image
In recent years, social media have become something that everyone knows about and uses.
Teenagers and young adults are the ones that make the most use of those. However, social
media changed from a way to be in touch with other people to a way of influencing people.
Nowadays, if we enter Instagram we see images and videos of everyone’s lives, but we only
see what they want to show us. Instagram is currently used to show the best of people. We
will never see pictures of a certain person on a bad day. Females are the gender that makes
the most use of Instagram, they post more pictures, they buy more things from
advertisements and they are also the ones that are more influenced by it. (Statista, 2018)
Famous female Instagrammers are usually skinny, beautiful and curvy. When a regular user
of Instagram opens the app every day and sees so many girls looking the same way body-
wise, they tend to want to look the same, for different reasons. Some girls think that because
they are different they are not as beautiful, other girls want more likes and to be as famous
as the girls they follow, and other girls feel that they will be left out of their circle of friends if
they do not look the same.
Advertisements of products to become skinny are also something that influences girls to
change their body image. Famous Instagrammers such as the Kardashians are always
advertising body products and teas to lose weight and for girls to have the same body shape
they have. However, the Kardashians have been subject to plastic surgeries so it is
impossible to look the same way naturally.
Boys are also influenced by Instagram because although girls use it more, the difference
between the two is only 0.8%. (Statista, 2018) However, boys are influenced to be more
muscular and masculine. Instagram influences a body image, but it is not the only thing it
influences. Lifestyle and tastes are also greatly influenced by the app.
To finish, Instagram does not influence you by itself: the users and the companies that pay
Instagram to post advertisements and Instagram together are the ones that influence you.
References:
Statista. (30 of December of 2018). Distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of October 2018,by gender. Fonte: Statistica: https://www.statista.com/statistics/802776/distribution-of-users-on-instagram-worldwide-gender/
27/12/2018
What is the relationship between brand and consumer on Instagram?
Instagram is probably the social media that is most used by brands and the social media
where advertisements are more profitable. Maybe because it is easier for the consumer to
be in touch with the brand and what it sells, and the comments area allows consumers to
see what other people think about that product.
Brands and consumers on Instagram have a win-to-win relationship. Basically, brands
contact certain consumers and if those consumers accept the brand terms they will advertise
the brand products and win popularity and become known (Gwarlann de Kerviler, 2017) . It
seems pretty simple and everyone can be a consumer that advertises a brand. However,
that is not how it works.
Only consumers that have some degree of popularity and are ‘famous' in the Instagram
world will be contacted by a brand. Brands want to sell their products and it does not make
sense to establish a partnership with a consumer that has few followers, and few likes in
their pictures. They need people who have a good number of followers that they will know
that the product will be advertised in various parts of the world.
The products will be advertised in pictures which will be posted by the consumers in the
partnership, so that possible buyers will see the product being used by a real person and not
an actress or actor who is being paid for that. However, that does not make the products
being sold a fraud because the consumer advertising does not care about the product. The
consumer wants to be more popular and gain more likes.
The truth is that this relationship is profitable for both. Many fashion brands use this type of
advertisement and also make-up brands as well. Even sites such as ‘Wish' use this move to advertise the website. It is not only for small brands, brands that are very famous and have
their name well-established use this as well.
To finish, brands and consumers use each other to make themselves profitable in different
ways, but both have the purpose to be seen and gain more visibility in the world.
References:
Gwarlann de Kerviler, A. A. (2017). Consumer Brand Relationship in the Age of Instagram.
Em R. P., Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of
Marketing Science (pp. 939-951). Springer, Cham. Fonte: SpringerLink.
27/12/2018
KYLIE JENNEr and her celebrity impact on instagram
For years now, the relationship between celebrities and the social media apps they frequent has been mostly used to promote themselves and their brand, and this is what Kylie Jenner has done, achieving her stardom by promoting her products. She became the most valuable influencer on instagram. And what is the main cause of her sucess on instagram?
Us, the viewers and our desire to have the same life as kylie making us buy the same products she uses in her posts to fullfill our dream, to make us look like her and think about the life we could have . The extremely constant Instagram photos makes us people jealous, but in a good way. People love Kylie because not only does she live the luxury life, but she makes her social media platforms a space where she connects personally with her fans. Kylie is one of
the most active celebrities on social media, and the way she shares her content is very smart.
Thanks to how many people interact with her account (the views, follows, link clicks, likes, comments), kylie Jenner Instagram posts are valued at over a million dollars in traditional ad spending, becoming the first member of the Kardashian-Jenner family to hit this milestone.
In a press release to People, D'Marie Analytics CEO Frank Spadafora said, "Influencer valuations move up and down like the stock market, but Kylie is methodical about consistently generating aspirational content for her social audience, without jeopardizing authenticity. Her use of social media to personally connect with and listen to her fans enables her to deliver products
they will actually purchase. This is a true case study for how brands can greatly benefit from working with social media influencers like Kylie.”
Kylie doesn´t show off, she tells her followers her thoughts and exclusive stories on instagram
as a way to make them feel as if they are there with her. This connection brings her close to them, and this inclusive feeling of loyalty between them two is what allowed her fan base to support her by buying her products.
Overall, Kylie uses her celebrity status and her loyal fan base whom she interacts with every day to strengthen her business. If she continues to do what she is doing, Kylie will continue to be one of most dominant figures on social media
References:
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/02/191639/kylie-jenner-impact-social-media (27/12/2018)
https://medium.com/rta902/kylies-social-media-is-the-reason-shes-so-successful-f53489d5636d (27/12/2018)
https://www.bustle.com/p/kylie-jenner-is-instagrams-most-valuable-influencer-her-social-media-reign-continues-8985835 (27/12/2018)
26/12/2018
The impact of instagram on fashion industry
Since the appearance of Instagram, the fashion industry has changed a lot. Many brands use
platforms like Instagram to mark their online brand presence and increase awareness.
Image and social networks have become key elements of fashion and luxury companies' strategies because they know that for sharing fashion (which is so reliant on visual presentation) platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are the leaders in connecting the latest trends and hot looks with the masses.
Instagram is an appropriate network to fashion brands to whom the visual and "community"
dimensions are essential: purchases generally linked to a feeling of belonging to a group, or because of the need to imitate famous people, etc. In addition, Instagram is an incomparable means to reaching millennials: in 2017, 90% of Instagram users were under 35. In love with social networks, this generation has a different relationship to brands, placing greater emphasis on use rather than possession and proving to be more sensitive to the power of the image.
Another characteristic of millennials is that they want things instantaneously. Jérôme Viala, deputy
managing director of Lectra (a provider of technological solutions for the fashion, automotive and
furniture industries) states, "When this generation wants to buy a product or service, they have to
be able to make the purchase immediately." This has recently been added to Instagram, with the
new "shop" button. If before it was easy to reach one special piece of clothing just by seeing the
brand tagged on the photo, now it is even easier. Other features have been developed over time in
order to enable brands to rebroadcast their events or reveal what is going on behind the scenes, etc.
Cooperating with brands, with the goal of reaching even more users, brands have been launching
contracts and partnerships with bloggers and famous Instagram users. They provide them the items, and their job is to photograph and post those. A new way of online advertising. "Since fashion bloggers arrived on the scene about a decade ago, they have gained influence and grown to be leaders in the industry", says a new report by Fashionbi.
The bloggers gained an audience, brands began to partner with them for even bigger advertising
campaigns, events, and other marketing efforts. While it may seem that fashion bloggers are losing
their luster, they still have large followings that rival magazines, creating an opportunity for luxury
brands to reach large, fashion-focused audiences.
On the whole, fashion has a whole arsenal of features, partners and means to reach a lot of people
in the technological world. The use of one of the most famous and used social networks may be,
eventually, their better ways to show, to convince and to sell fashion, just with a few clicks.
References:
https://www.danarebeccadesigns.com/the-fashion-impact-of-instagram (26/12/18)
https://www.quora.com/How-has-Instagram-influenced-the-fashion-industry (26/12/18)
https://www.luxurydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf_cache/1/1/9/3/4/0/119340.pdf (26/12/2018)
22/12/2018
the influence of instagram on lifestyle
Instagram is a social networking service that was created in October 2010 and looks like the friendliest social network imaginable. It is a visually led community where the primary method of interaction is double-tapping an image to like it and where posts tend to go viral because of positivity.
But this positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. This social networking service encourages us, users, to present attractive images that others may find misleading or harmful. Most of the time, Instagram presents a false expectation for us to live up to, because we quite often see images that claim to be showing us reality, yet it is not true. That is especially damaging to young people. The risk of developing an unhealthy body image is often highlighted, but this is just one aspect. Many users believe that Instagram causes mental health issues.
Besides that, many users believe that the introduction of Instagram’s algorithmic timeline, which was one of the largest changes to the platform, aggravated this situation. Rather than presenting us with a cross-section of what the people we were following were up to, Instagram began populating feeds with the most noteworthy posts from those accounts, often reaching back days or weeks to pull in
particularly compelling content. Thanks to this algorithmic timeline, Instagram began promoting an unrealistic version of an already unrealistic feed.
As we can see, Instagram is not as friendly as we thought, but very misleading and even harmful. And this algorithmic timeline does not help at all, it makes it even worse.
References:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/17/instagram-is-supposed-to-be-friendly-so-why-is-it-making-people-so-miserable (22/12018)