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.