How has social media impacted how we present ourselves?
My opinion is that social media can be very useful for a lot of teenagers because most of them don’t really know what they want to do/be in the future, which could be an issue regarding mental health. Not knowing what you want to do in the future causes stress which could affect the day to day life, meaning you would constantly think about your future.
Social media gives the opportunity to people to find a suitable job for them. For example, if some people believe that they have the creativity to do something else, such as making films, they would focus more on finding people or get inspirations, and a good place to find it would be social media. That is because social media doesn’t just give the people the opportunity to watch films, but some sites could even show what could be improved, which helps the people wanting to do something similar because they could prevent the mistakes done before them. It is a learning method too.
Discussing the subject in class gave me the opportunity to learn why people use social media because some of them use it for different reasons, such as keeping in touch with the people not so close to you, showing people who you are and what makes you special so if they are interested they could contact you and give you such things like a sponsorship or a job.
A lot of people post content to show what they have to offer or express what they like to do the most, in the same time earning money too, because at the end of the day most people post to earn the money to live, and some of them to save the money so in the future they could do something bigger which later it will bring them more earnings, because I think social media is about evolving.
Task 1: Take a screenshot of your social media profile and make notes of any content that may be deemed unprofessional. Why?
Sometimes I use Facebook, which allows me to post and share things, and some of the most common pictures I share are the ones related to school and how it stresses me out sometimes. I share a lot of pictures regarding school because they seem funny to me so it’s relatable, but at the same time true too. For example, this post I shared a while ago was of how everything at school doesn’t seem to go right but I updated my playlist with new music.
This seems to be entertaining, however I think that it is not a good example of what to do, especially is you’re behind with coursework, because if you cannot keep up with work at school, the right thing to do is to stop spending so much time on social media making jokes and to start catching up.
It does give the impression that I am not serious enough about school, which is not true because sometimes you need to have a break and laugh a little. However, for some people, the joke continues and
they do not start taking school a little bit more serious. Knowing the difference between when to joke and be serious is important so we don’t lose ourselves.
Also, an important thing to do is that if I’ve got exams and deadlines I should be studying and preparing myself instead of staying online and sharing pictures that I find ironic. It might be funny at the moment but when the real deadline is approaching I would have to start getting serious about what I am going to do.
Task 2: Find 2 public figures whose social media brand appeals to you.
One of the brands that appeals to me is a beauty brand called Morphe. I think that the brand has really good products and affordable as well. They’re best known for their make up brushes which are synthetic and blend really well. They also have eyeshadow pallets which people are crazy about since they have a great pigment and they are really affordable. The newest eyeshadow pallet that came out was in collaboration with a famous beauty influencer called James Charles. They had the quickest sale of their history and it sold out worldwide online in just a matter of minutes. The eyeshadow was not really cheap, however the pigment of those colours are incredible and totally worth it.
Another brand that I like it’s a clothing brand called Champion. The brand became famous in the last few months and a lot of people, including myself, started liking their clothing line. Some people might find the clothes overpriced, which is fair enough, however the quality is really good and they don’t wash out after the first wash. Just by feeling the material of the clothes you will realise that it’s going to last for more than 2 months.
Task 3: Research 2 public figures/CEOs and evaluate if/how their personal brand has affected the success of their business/commercial brand.
One of the public figures I believe has succeeded a lot is Saffron Barker. She is a youtuber who creates videos of her trying on clothes and challenges.She is also a make up lover and she got the opportunity to collaborate with Beauty Bay and come out with three pallets of her own.
She is currently at 1 million followers on Instagram, which obviously helps support her range of clothing and her eyeshadow pallets. The big amount of followers helps her with getting sponsorships as well because brands look for people who are loved and are followed, and her 1 million followers could be helpful for companies who want to promote clothes or skin care products, for example.
Even though this increased her popularity, there was another range that she got really popular and that is her own Saffron Barker collection which is being sold at Primark. She had the opportunity to work with Primark and make her own collection of clothes, including pijamas and house decorations. Not only she is know in the UK, but she also has fans internationally which is even a better idea for her to stock her range internationally, which can result to even more international people finding out about her. In October she released her second range which was bigger than her first one.
Her primary source of income is probably from her youtube channels, since she has lots of viewers. She started off with one main channel posting once a week, however when she noticed that more people start watching her and getting an interest in her daily life, she started a new vlog channel where she posts almost every day of the week. With both her channels she gets more viewers which means it increases her income.
The second public figure is Victoria Beckham. She is a fashion designer and also a former singer in the pop group Spice Girls. Now she is focusing on designing clothes having her own successful brand.
Her music career definitely helped her be famous because that’s how she got into the celebrity world. She then moved onto fashion leaving her music career behind and started to create her own collection of clothes. While she was in the pop group she was the one to wear little black dresses and had to co-ordinate with the other girls, however when the group split she started getting an interest in fashion and which had really good results.
Her successful clothing line has resulted with her getting collaborations with other big brands. For example, she and Estee Lauder collaborated and came out with make up products which sadly people were not obsessed with because of the overpriced products.
People’s reviews certainly did not help with her popularity in a good way since a lot of them were about the prices and how inconvenient is to pay a big amount of money for a small packaging of make up.
She is currently being followed by 24.1 million people on Instagram which shows that she is quite popular. Beckham is pretty active on social media posting about her upcoming launches or events which certainly increases the amount of people to know about her.
Her recent project was in collaboration with Reebok and is loved by a lot of people. Reebok is a famous brand so their collaboration only brought more fame to her, but also to Reebok. She claims ”I wanted a collection that works with a busy schedule like mine” which proves that even with her own collection of clothes going on, she wanted to do more and collaborate with such big brands, like Reebok.
With her social media followers, she posted a lot about this new campaign with Reebok on her Instagram page, making her fans love the collection before it even came out, which I identify as a good strategy to sell as much as possible.