My View

Here comes an end the discussion of social media influencers. I must say that working on this theme was a pleasure for me to do research and write something up from it. I must say thank you to our Professor Nesbitt for this providing us this opportunity.

Firstly, when I searched for various information regarding the improvement of social media influencer tactics, one point caught my full attention. It is both related to human needs and psychological consequences. It calls altruism.

Research says that people naturally crave this feeling of helping others, thus, they could aware of their self-worthiness (Idler, 2011). Actually, as a senior psychology student, I must say that feeling oneself as an important individual in the community/society raises our self-esteem way higher than anything else. Eventually, positive traits, such as empathy, could arise in us. So, altruism is one of those most-essentials for self-development.

Moreover, I found out that in other countries, influential celebrities must engage in various donations to show others they care for their environment. It can be national, environmental or community-related. The aim is to engage with society and others. As a result, this process actually makes them even more respected and popular.

Nevertheless, not every single social media influencer can donate if he/she has just entered the industry or very rarely shows up in public to promote one or two brands. So, I must say that this also depends on the type of influencer and the circle of audience.

As I mentioned in my first acticle that we have a lot of young influencers in their twenties and who are mostly students. They sometimes announce giveaways that concentrated on cosmetics. The audience would be only girls who seek help. These are NOT environmentally beneficial or advantageable for the community. And the result is that they end up with the same circle with one aim: feedbacks on cosmetic products. This is the simplest and most general example.

HOWEVER!

However, we have also other influencers that truly want to develop our society and straightly influence others even in the smallest amount. This paragraph would be related to the concept of altruism and societal acceptance which I talked about previously.

So, there is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that consists of guys on their thirties that aim to build a living place for homeless children. It is called “Lantuun Dohio LLC” in Mongolian.

Not that much of time has spent since their first establishment. But they could reach enough attention and financial help in a very short time. For your information, November 1^st is considered a Mongolian national day of giving. Usually, this day is dedicated to handicapped people, homeless children and those who are in needs. On that day, the director of the organization started a donation on Facebook so that people could give what they could for the future of those children.

The aim was to reach approximately 60.000 dollars for the establishment of the building. As a result, they reached 92.250 dollars just in 19 hours (more information on https://www.facebook.com/MagicMongolia/)

I paid attention to influencers on that day. Some of them donated and showed it online. Maybe some of them did not show online. It all depends on the person. Nevertheless, I felt very thankful and appreciative for those young, “cosmetics” only influencers who donated and actually helped the NGO to grow. There were few, I know, but even a few means there are still some people who are not only promoters but helpers.

To finalize, we are all young right now at this moment. I am not someone to judge negatively these first-time-influencers. We all lose and gain. All I wanted to say that we, as a young generation, must learn and develop as intellectual individuals. No matter if someone is an influencer or just a person, empathy should come first!

-Learning not to annoy others

-Give them space

-Affect the surrounding POSITIVELY are the most important aspects to become better versions of ourselves.

I hope all my postings helped you a little more to have an idea of what does it mean to be an influential influencer.

Thank you and wish you good luck with everything!

Sincerely yours,

Amarlan

References

Deutsch, M. & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, p. 629-636

Idler, 2011. Social Influence on the Web: Eight UX Implementations. Retrieved from https://usabilla.com/blog/social-influence-on-the-web-eight-ux-implementations/

Lantuun Dohio NGO. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/lantuundohio/

Magic Mongolia. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/MagicMongolia/

For Further Research

Here, I will provide you with essential and knowledgeable websites that would help you to understand the importance of the right management of online advertising.

1.   http://neginmirsalehi.com/

I have known her for a long time: she is a model, an influence and a business-woman. She owns this hair oil product called Gisou. She advertises Gisou in a very unique way.

I should mention that she is a traveler. She takes the product with herself everytime wherever she travels. Besides just showing the product, she pays attention to the background, adds music, basically makes the advertisement very beautiful. As I mentioned in my previous article, it is essential to show the audience that the influencer engages with the product in everyday situations. She is an example of this. I guess the reason why she succeeds with Gisou is that she advertises the product in a unique way. Besides just advertising, she publishes many different stories and articles about herself in a personal blog. Therefore, her followers could catch up with her.

2. https://www.instagram.com/diana_korkunova/?hl=en

The first person I mentioned, Negin Mirsalehi has 5.6 million followers on Instagram. This time, I wanted to mention a Russian girl who is 22 years old, has 1.5 million followers Diana Korkunova. She is my age and I thought it would be nearer to my readers to know about her. She does not owe any own products but she is a great influencer in society. I have been following her for 5 years and never have I unfollowed her during these years.

I know many Russian celebrities and influencers and there have been times I followed a lot of them. However, most of their posts were related to product selling. Just an automatic advertisement without engagement and dedication. Thus, there are only a few people on my list now.

The reason I follow Diana is that she does not do promotions all the time. She rarely posts something related to advertising but most times she shows her routine, interest and hobbies to the audience which is more interesting. She is very sarcastic and charismatic.

Another thing I like her blog is that she explains, tells stories and answers questions both in English and Russian. She knows that there are many English speakers in her followers, therefore, it shows that she cares about them too. When she advertises a product, it is not a bunch of pictures at one time. She does in slowly and properly. I think that she only advertises those products she really tried and trusts.

3. https://pepamack.com/

Her name is Petra and she is a creator. Minimalist and stylist. I decided to mention her because sometimes too many words or too much information on the internet just annoys us really fast.

Although she is an influencer and although she has thousands of followers, she writes no caption in her posts. She does not publish her own stories and does not explain anything much thoroughly. Sometimes being a minimalist is healthy, in my opinion.

Her photos on Instagram are all about style and clothing. There is no such description of it, however, she mentions the name of brands on

her website. That is her way to advertise clothing brands. Nothing more or nothing less. People just see it, receive the information, get the hint of outfit and that is it. Recommended for stylish and minimalistic outfit lovers.

What the Experts Say II

My dearest reader,

I hope you remember my first post about the failures of online advertisement. How it annoys followers, how unprofessional the “influencers” are behaving on Instagram.

So, in this post, I decided to share what I have found interesting. We all now live in an online world, almost all of us have several social media accounts. Because that is how we interact with the world, right? :D

And I think that some percentage of us once in a lifetime paid attention to online product marketing/selling. Was there anything that you found affective about the product or destroying on the contrary?

So, here is my question: “How to succeed with influencer branding?”

According to United Influencers (2019), it is not that easy to promote a certain brand through influencers, relying on them. Beforehand, the marketing team should thoroughly plan the upcoming process and be ready for afterward positive/negative/neutral effects. I read on many websites that online promotion is not only calling the influencer, taking a shot with the product and publish it on the platform.

In reality, it turns out that the influencer should engage with the product in daily life. They should do it in order to show the audience that he/she really uses the product, being a genuine fan and how the product improves his/her life.

However, as I told before, our Mongolian influencers showing it too much. I compared our people to other influencers from many different countries.

This is how other people improve the sells of the product: they introduce it very shortly, briefly and understandably in very few sentences (thus, the audience would understand the aim of the product immediately). They mention pros and cons GENUINELY. By cons, I mean that they usually warn people about effects (I will thrive it later in my last post).

Third, they would not show the product all the time, which is being a general error in our Mongolian influencers. This tells that time and management mean a lot for the growth of the brand (United Influencers, 2019)

References

United Influencers, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.unitedinfluencers.com/build-influencer-marketing-strategy-2019/

What the Experts Say I

First of all, let us ask people what is a social media influencer. This Forbes video explains very briefly our question and actually shows that anyone from any age can be a social media influencer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=169&v=etQ36X37dXo&feature=emb_title

As we have seen in the video and as I have been doing research, an influencer is someone who has the power to affect others. To purchase a product, to help make decisions, to change the audience’s worldview. It all depends on “his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience” (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019).

There are several types of influencers: celebrities (for example, Kylie Jenner who has 152 million followers on Instagram), industry experts and leaders (Elon Musk – the founder of Tesla, Paypal, SpaceX), bloggers and vloggers (PewDiePie - 102 million subscribers on YouTube), micro-influencers (no less than 5k followers on Instagram).

While I was searching the internet about the term of influencers, it has found that number of followers or subscribers does not matter. Which means that the most important thing about being a social media influencer is the actual impact. The content he/she gives, the relationship an influencer has with his/her audience (United Influencers, 2019).

For your information: there are many applications and websites that give you thousands of fake Instagram accounts for a certain amount of payment. However, experts mentioned that the actual interaction with the audience (with people with real accounts) is far more essential and qualified than just a number on the screen. I agree with this idea, however, in my opinion, number does matter for marketing people. The very first thing they and other people see and observe is the number of followers and likes. Sadly.

References

Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019. Retrieved from https://influencermarketinghub.com/what-is-an influencer/

United Influencers, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.unitedinfluencers.com/be-an-influencer/

Current Events II

The city I lived before Prague and probably will live in the future to flourish it, is Ulaanbaatar, my capital. In recent years UB was considered one of the most air-polluted cities in the world during winter time (from November till February). It hugely affected citizens’ health conditions, kids’ immune systems, even became hard to give birth and raise a child in this condition. As a Mongolian girl, I was disappointed.

Nevertheless, and thankfully, from this year UB has left the “most polluted capital city” list. According to news, our capital is now placed among cities, such as Osaka (Japan) and Vancouver (Canada)! Even though UB was in the first places as the most polluted, now it has moved to 64th place on air quality (Aki Press, 2019).

This was a huge improvement, moreover, it was the greatest news ever in the last years! Not only to me but to all our citizens. In reality, many years have spent just to live in a healthy, non-polluted condition. And I, personally, was proud of this improvement.

However, there is always negativity and judgment in every single positivity. Specifically, this news was published in October. I read many comments and saw how many of us reflected on this. There were many people that could not believe. There were also many people who just could not accept this good news. For instance, judgmental comments stated that the winter has not come yet, therefore it is wrong to conclude that smog has really gone.

From one point of view, we can think that it may be really early to finalize the process. Maybe smog will appear again in the mid of November, who knows. But from another point of view, why not to stay positive and hope that we really got rid of the most dangerous thing?

I really wanted people to stay happy and appreciative to this amazing improvement. And especially “influencers” should spread positivity to their audience in order to influence their minds. However, I saw some influencers were showing the same judgment as others.

When sharing a post or commenting on a post they really should think about consequences. They should be aware of their audience and after effect. Some of those did not seem controlling their public posts regarding national news. However, I saw they are being really controllable of themselves when involved in fashion industry (advertisement, products, sales, coupons, etc). But when comparing our influencers to other country’s influencers, there is a huge gap. I will describe it in the next post.

References

Aki Press, 2019. https://m.akipress.com/news:628527:Ulaanbaatar_improves_its_position_in_most_polluted_cities_ranking/?fbclid=IwAR0t2BLm9jVit9tfJ3SPJfNp5en0MuJ5uCekSufzmvQ01Uz3wmbiZsB46vU

Current Events I

High school students, millennials, young adults – all now use a social platform called Instagram. A few years ago, its usage was not that popular as now. These days, literally everything is happening there, as I mentioned in my previous posting.

Usually, my routine goes this way: I wake up, visit my Instagram and scroll a bit to get informed what my friends doing there in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We have 7 hours of difference between UB and Prague, which means that when I am waking up, there is already an afternoon. So I get enough updates just in 5 minutes.

So, this happened. There is a Korean Cosmetics company called Tony Moly which has many branches in my city. I think recently their manager has changed, thus, the advertisement strategies have also changed. I scrolled for a few minutes and ALL my content was only about one thing. Tony Moly. REPEATEDLY. In both stories (which disappear after 24 hours) and posts (which last). I immediately closed the application because it was annoying. Moreover, throughout the day, I visited Instagram but kept closing it because Tony Moly was still here.

On that day, I understood that timing is an important aspect of online advertising. Bunch of postings at the same time, on the same day, to the same audience was too much. A little bit of separateness in timing could have worked. Since they are doing a non-written contract of a paid partnership, the company of the product can tell their preferences. They should work beneficially, not annoyingly.

The second important aspect, in this case, was that these Instagram models who worked with the Korean cosmetic product were the people I know in real life. One was my friend, another one was the wife of my other friend, one was my high school acquaintance and the rest I knew from mutual friends. I met all of them and hung up several times. RECENTLY. And, you know, girls talk about everything including cosmetics. I remember we once had a discussion about sensitive skin was a huge problem for me and for them (of course we did not meet altogether at the same time, but we have these occasional meetings in summer during my vacation).

I told them a story I used Tony Moly that afterward, I went to a dermatologist because I had an unbearable allergy. We were talking about this and I remember we all agreed that Korean products, especially skin products, are not preferable to our skin due to our climate and sensitive skin. A Korean climate is much softer and moisturized, however, our climate is the opposite, it is very dry. So women usually use extra moisturizing toners and creams, for instance.

I messaged to these people because they wrote something really magical in their descriptions that seemed not true. I know that all of them use different skin products, such as Chanel, Clinique, etc. Some of them responded, some of them not. Nearly got an argument between us just because of the advertising product.

Too much of "Influencers"

Dear All,

My name is Amy and I am from Mongolia. I am a senior psychology student at the University of New York in Prague and this semester I am taking a course called Media&Society. Since now, I will be posting issues concerning INFLUENCERS of social media. I will provide information based on my personal perspective and judgement, but I will also provide information from psychological point of view.

I hope you will think twice after reading my posts and become critical when scrolling down social media.


So, here is the introduction.

For my whole life, I lived in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar (except for my 1 semester journey to the US and 4 years in the Czech Republic). And few decades ago, an area called advertisement came in into our society. But it was only shown in TV and heard in radio.

The internet was there, but was not that actively used before 2006, 2007. And only from that time, our citizens just started to browse the net, connect with each other by Yahoo Messenger, and add each other on Hi5 to share photos (not sure if some of you remember this website, but this was popular before Facebook).

Then from 2008, Facebook replaced Hi5 and all of us had at least one account there. At that time, only few used Instagram, but rarely. Mainly Facebook and mainly for browsing photos, videos, without any advertisements.

Now, in 2019, millennials, youngsters, adults, professionals, non-professionals, ALL use Instagram. That is a fact.

If I recall, only 2-3 years ago, it was used for only personal archive. But now, it is hard to say that people use it for their personal zone.

All I can see is advertisements, promotions, reviews. It is a good thing, of course, if I can see it from a marketer's perspective, you know, saving money and being beneficial to both the customer, audience and yourself. Advertisements cost a lot (time, money, energy, creativity, productivity), we are all aware of it. Then comes Instagram and registered people with many followers (10k, 20k, 30k..). Why not to combine these two and promote the product with a low cost, right?



Within any positive thing, there is a negativity. This is an unwritten rule.
This Instagram promotion thing with so-called influencers went too far in my home country. And this area interests me because it gives an idea of easiness to non-professional marketing people. It makes Instagram an advertising platform, where all you can see is ads.

The terminology "influencer" should define a person who is considerate, thoughtful and someone who aims for quality. However, these days, I see too many of these promoting people on social media aiming for nothing but just for fame. They use advertising in a wrong way: too many unnecessary information on their stories and posts, when followers just skip it; too many invitations to parties when the organization mentions an "influencer" in their stories and that "influencer" re-shares it on his/her story;  too many giveaways; too many product reviews, when that influencer just says what is on the instruction, without mentioning proper effect of the product.

So, I would like to discuss how to use the social media account for advertisements without annoying followers and how to keep them by giving proper, effective information about certain product. These days, we judge others by his/her social media profiles, therefore, I think it is a worth mentioning topic.