Share It and Spread It...The Media!

The everlasting debate of what works on social media in the shareable and spreadable sense of interaction or response with an audience is the main inspiration and focus for this discussion. Depending on what source you consult with, you will usually get a different answer each time for what types of content will always get shared, regardless of audience. “...the spread of all forms of media relies as much (or more) on their circulation by the audience as it does on their commercial distribution, that spreadability is determined by processes of social appraisal rather than technical or creative wizardry and on the active participation of engaged audiences,” (Spreadable Media). When paired with the audience and producers of each set of content further engines, changes, and creates mass and popular culture. According to Jenkins, Ford, and Green in Spreadable Media, this list looks as follows:


-Uncertainty: Pick any news station. Seriously, any of them. This stuff sells.

-Shared fantasy: This can be G to R rated fantasy. Dream vacations to dream hookups with anime Star Wars characters dressed as furries...well I guess that would just be Chewbacca..scratch that, but you get the point.

-Humor- You know those videos of people falling off of buildings, flying off of rope swings, catapulting off of overexcited trampolines, being attacked by the collateral damage of a 5 year old trying to break a piñata with a baseball bat? They are humorously satisfying and pleasurable regardless of the pain factor. Humans, what masochists.

-Unfinished content- There are various artists that you can find on any social media platform where they thrive off of creating large projects that are released in small bits at a time. The trick is that it is interesting enough that their targeted audience for them to wait for the next round of sharing and will even pay for the content that is being created. One of the best and most unique examples that comes to mind are artists and couple Mitch Gobel and Sally Mustang who together create an ongoing art exhibit about sexual experience and defying social norms.

Next to the man I love, in front of what we create when we are together. This piece especially is a complete mixture of mine and Mitch's creative energy merging together. To view this piece along with our whole new collection, come join us for our exhibition 'Paradise Valley' if you are interested in making a private booking to see / purchase any of the original pieces, I urge you to get in contact asap with Mitch: mitch@mgracorporation.com tickets to the opening night of the exhibition are nearly sold out, jump online now if you would like to fill last few spots- - 12th of Nov held at @tradertrove Miami, Gold Coast QLD. ( it's over 18 as we have a few sneaky surprises ) Link for the last few tickets is in my bio ✨

A photo posted by Sally Mustang (@sallymustang) on Oct 30, 2016 at 2:32pm PDT

Mystery- Paranormal things, haunted objects or houses, Netflix series, clowns...Trump... 

-Timelines- The current presidential election is one timeline that has everyone spreading and sharing until their brains explode and even their mothers won’t support them anymore. No more likes for you, Bobby, this isn’t you, those liberals have brainwashed you.

-Activism- Feminism, Black Lives Matter, the current pipeline controversy on Native American reservations, LGBTQ rights, vegetarian and veganism, and the list goes on.


Now, when comparing this to a list that our COMM 339 class created together, that we believed was most shareable and spreadable from our perspectives in the social media world, you can see some similarities based on the genre rather than the specifics of what is shareable. Each personal list will vary depending on each student’s experience with social media, their level of involvement, and specific interests in either platform or content, but the collective list as a class looks as follows:


-Practical or Life Hacks - Facebook is one of the main platforms that shares content like this in super short and inedible shareable videos or picture collaborations. There are specific brands or content creators that have recognized this shareable nature of this genre of social media culture if you will.

Follow @lifehack 😬😬😬😬 Source: Reddit #DIY #Awesome #cool #craft #love #like #20likes #amazing #smile #iphone #look #swag #girl #boy #followme

A photo posted by Life Hack (@lifehack) on Nov 3, 2016 at 11:18am PDT

-Relatable or Personal- Tumblr poetry feeds or sappy relationship tweets.

-Cute- Animal videos, baby videos (I don’t know why), cutesy relationship things that are just depressing if you’re single, etc are all under the cute umbrella.

-Shocking or Breaking- This is just renaming Uncertainty from the previous list.

-Scary- More clowns....Trump. Okay, okay I digress.

-Celebrity- For some reason people still are interested in Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

-Contests/Giveaway- Free stuff? Count us in. Even if nothing is truly free, we like to believe this Utopian falsehood anyway.

-Trolling -Also called “roasting”. Extra crispy to the point of disintegration is the desired roast level.

We can see a few consistencies, but quite a few dissimilarities just between the interpretation of shareability from two groups who study the same type of social media content. This may be due to age, qualification at this point in life, the types of social media that we are interested in personally, and the list goes on. According to Spreadable Media, all media needs certain qualities in order to be spreadable. It needs to be “available when and where audiences want it”, “portable”, “easily reusable in a variety of ways”, and “part of a steady stream of material”. This isn’t a guaranteed formula of success of course, but the success rate of the shareability of posts is greatly increased if these aspects are implemented.

I am able to create my own list of aspects that I personally think are the most shareable or spreadable on most social media platforms Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, etc, by examining what culture means to me in a social media sense. According to Fiske, “audiences “pluralize” the meanings and pleasures [mass culture] offers, evade or resist its disciplinary efforts, fracture its homogeneity or coherence, raid or poach upon its terrain” and that people produce culture when they integrate products and texts into their everyday lives,” (Spreadable Media). Whether it is mass culture or popular culture depends on who is in control. “Under the producer’s control, it is mass culture. Under the audience’s control, it is popular culture,” (Spreadable Media). My list would look as follows:

Cultural Connections - A great example of this which is currently happening is Wurstfest in New Braunfels, Texas. There is a huge cultural connection that people have with each other, on and off of social media, based off of familiarity, experience, and enjoyment.

Tragedy and Love- Just read ancient social media. Yes, I am talking about Shakespeare. Nothing has changed.

Politically Stimulating Topics/Issues- Politically stimulating issues will always, always be shareable as long as there are polarized political parties, religions, social classes, genders, etc. This aspect can extend towards the Activism aspect previously mentioned.

Okay, it can be funny too...

I'm nervous, I think they all have flaws as presidents, But you gotta choose the better of two evils and also, Government, Stop letting Hillary get away with her emails. - - - - - - - #meme #memes #dankmeme #dankmemes #funny #comedy #joke #lol #lmao #editranked #rofl #lmfao #haha #dank #spongebob #president #politics #isupporttrump #hillaryforprison #garyjohnson #jillstein

A photo posted by Erik || Aries (@sirtrashington) on Nov 6, 2016 at 8:52pm PST

Social Circles- Depending on the social media community that is interacting, the level of shareability and spreadability changes. This is similar to the cultural connections aspect. The spreadability and shareability of my posts varied depending on how it relates to my multiple social circles; high school circles, college circles, friend circles, interest circles, and the like.

My list is shorter, but my aspects have more of an umbrella functionality rather than being specific.  Each aspect can branch out into other channels that are connected by relevancy and cultural influence. Shareability and spreadability is different for each social media user, but if the content itself is grounded in the basic principles described in Spreadable Media, you’ll experience more successful spreading and sharing much quicker.

The Analysis of Facebook Pages of Small Businesses in Texas; What Works?

     It is one thing to examine social media activity on a grand scale, disconnected from your immediate environment, social circles, or everyday culture, but it is another to look at the social media of individuals or businesses that you interact with personally on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. By examining the social media feeds of local businesses in my community, and in other small town in Texas, I have been able to diagnose what strategies or types of posts either are successful or not for this specific area, population, or simply the business itself via likes, shares, and comments. There is no fix all to make sure a post will be successful or interesting for the audience you are trying to reach, but you can try to simulate the professionals in certain ways that bests reaches the audience your area. For example, social media guru Guy Kawasaki.

     Guy explains specific social media strategies in the article Guy Kawasaki's 10 Tips for a Perfect Social Media Post that can be used to improve the success rate of the posts that you share to various social media platforms. The platform that I focused on specifically during this analysis of local Texas businesses occurred primarily on Facebook, and Guy provides tips for this platform as well. The pages of the bushinesses that I analyzed would function as a brand page where a particular tone and business persona is used to attract a targeted audience. The two businesses analyzed were Court Street Coffee Shop in Seguin, Texas and Kay’s Finds Antique and Unique in Yoakum, Texas. I examined the most recent 20 posts at the time of research and analysis and looked to see how many likes, comments, and shares that each post received and how that correlated with the post itself and what was or was not included.

     The graph above represents the data of how many likes, shares, and comments that the 20 Facebook posts on the Court Street Coffee Shop's page had. Court Street Coffee Shop is a well known establishment in the Seguin community and it has steadily grown over the years to better fit the needs and wants of the community here; both residential and collegiate. It is a coffee shop which automatically increases the interaction that it may receive due to what coffee shops represent to us in society as we know it. A place of gathering, making friends, meeting them, hosting events, and enjoying coffee. Across the board, the numbers for all activity on the posts examined were incredibly low expect for one major outlier and a few higher numbers. The post that received the most attention had 545 likes, 42 shares, and 44 comments. This posts shows two different drinks that the coffee shop is currently offering with a cute and punny caption. Super cute. Super shareable. Super likable. "The easiest thing you can do to attract more readers and to increase interaction is to add a graphic to every post. This simple act can double engagement,” suggests Kawasaki. This type of posts definitely works for the Court Street Coffee Shop and the audience that it is trying to advertise to, which is primarily Seguin residents.


 

     Other posts were not so fortunate in the attention that they received. The post below shows the content of an event that was happening in the coffee shop and a listing of upcoming events. There were only four likes and no comments or shares. Either this is not interesting to those who follow CSCS on Facebook, they are not planning on attending any of these events, or they simply do not feel the need to like, comment on, or share this post with others who may share a similar interest. This could also be due to how the post looks itself. Maybe the picture isn’t interesting enough, maybe a video clip would have worked better, the caption could have been more interactive or emotion-filled. The post may have been too long and many viewers just don’t want to click the “See More” option to continue reading what the post has to say. "I’ve never seen a post that was too short. Most posts are too long. Obviously Twitter has a 140-character limit, but posts for other platforms should be three to five sentences long. If you want to go longer, write a blog post and use social media to drive people to it. You have a few seconds to capture people’s attention—think Tinder, not eHarmony,” said Kawasaki. There are a lot of variables that are attempting to work in unison here and it is hard to say exactly what worked and what didn’t based off of the low audience response that we see.

     Then we see posts that fall somewhere in the middle based off of the amount of reaction that they receive which suggests potential or simply luck in sharing based off of the time in which is was shared or the content within the post. Below we see that Seguin residents obviously would rather win stuff than go to an event if we are solely analyzing social media. This type of post catches more attention and seems to be more important based off of the increased amount of likes that it receives.





     Moving on to a differnt town in Texas, Yoakum, Texas to be exact, we see a very differnt social media dynamic. On Kay’s Finds Antique and Unique Facebook page, we see fewer posts and fewer likes, shares, and comments on all of the posts collectively. This potentially may be because this is a newer business and it has not yet established a strong local or social media presence in the community. The like, share, and comment numbers did not exceed two for this business, regardless of what was posted. There are no posts past January of this year, which means that either this business simply gave up on social media, or they did not find it necessary. to their success. The graph below shows the Facebook activity for the businesses’ posts. Little to no activity can be seen and the highest amount of interaction was two comments on a post with a few singular likes or shares scattered throughout. 

 

     The post above only received one like and one share. This is a low quality picture with one view of the product for sale and a mediocre caption, so this may be an indication as to why it hasn’t really caught anyone’s attention in regards to shareability. Unlike the Court Street Coffee Shop, this business did not have even 20 posts to analyze, for there were only 15 posts total in this businesses social media history on Facebook.

 

     The above post did not receive any response at all. The pictures are still low quality, are at awkward angles, with emotionless captions, and evoke no connection between the audience, potential customers, and the business. I think that antique shops have a real potential to connect with their audience with the cuteness factor, just like the cute coffee post seen earlier by Court Street Coffee Shop, but this has to be taken into consideration and used properly and effectively.

     These two businesses may not be the best examples of effective and shareable social media, but they are great examples of what some smaller, local organizations and businesses are trying to do as far as social media goes. It is a lot of trial and error, which is a good deal of what this business may be doing, but they is not where it can stop. You have to be able to learn form the responses that you receive from your followers via likes, shares, and comments and begin to share more of what you believe people will be more apt to respond to. Do not make it shareable for just one type of audience member, but for multiple types of audience members. An easy way to do this is to continue to reformat posts in multiple ways to reach multiple types of social media users. Links, no links, pictures, no pictures, promotions, no promotions, whatever it takes to grow and promote a relationship between your business and those that you are catering to with the product that you have.