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Social media, the new cash cow

 Social media. Photo: Courtesy

Although the budgets are fair the results can be measured and even geo-tagged to create more awareness for better results making this a lucrative venture for many.

With the advent of YouTube, a lot of bloggers and content producers are opting to use their other social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in promoting their YouTube links which redirect traffic to YouTube where they get paid.

ARMIES

Tags such as #beliebers #rihannanavy #beyhive #solgeneration are always dominating social media and are used by loyal fans to show their love for their idols. It’s therefore no coincidence that almost every Rihanna song is always trending 36 hours after its release, before moving on to becoming a chart-topper. The next accolade becomes the artistes going platinum.

Most of these groups have core founding members who are linked with the artiste and the artistes social media’s team and then dispatch the message to sub cliques and it goes viral like that until its actually an organic conversation and they have genuine fans who enlist to join these armies.

 The power of social media. Photo: Courtesy.

Locally, the use of social media influencers is becoming common. Christian Ndela with his #Xtiendela is a good example.

Usually, such people move around with groups of people who are also tech-savvy and have more than one account with a huge following.

Influencers are paid per day to ensure that they make a topic trending by igniting talk about it.

VIDEO HOSTING CHANNELS

Gone are the days when artistes would beg television stations to play their music. Artistes are now setting up their own YouTube channels.

This is majorly because YouTube is a channel of revenue in its own right and artistes want to maximise on all their revenue channels.

The days for all artistes having their content on one channel might have ended but the day where all artistes music content is under one blanket has just began.

You might have noticed a sign on your favourite artiste’s video, such as ‘Ngomma’ or ‘Vevo’, which are video-hosting platforms. Artistes are opting to join such platforms in order to further their craft.

Whenever an artiste signs up with such platforms, they not only get a chance to premiere their music on such banners but to increase the number of people who view their music.

As long as YouTube allows advertisers to use your channel you will be paid a percentage of the advertising revenue received, but being an individual artiste, usually new and unknown, means you rarely have enough views and the pay you get will be little as your video will only have gather less than a thousand views.

With platforms such as ‘Ngomma’ and ‘Vevo’ you can be paid after your first 1000 views. Ngomma is a locally hosting channel owned by Clemmo, a veteran producer who has made it accessible in Kenya, Ethiopia and other east African countries.

PERCEPTION

Remember the lady who had photo shopped her pictures to make it seem like she was in China? As sad a reality as it was, she’s not the only one feeling the need to create false perceptions.

In a world where faking it has become the norm, everyone will do anything to turn heads and get eyes glued to their smartphones just to hit the like button, retweet or repost their pictures.

Social media is a perception game. It is about what you can make people believe about you as opposed to how true it is.

‘If you can make them believe it, then you can live it,’ seems to be the tagline. Rarely will you find photos on your timeline showing you ladies without make up. Taking photos at only the hottest spots, in the hottest wear, in the hottest rides and with celebrities is all they portray, all so they can get an extra like or an extra comment.

This has created a situation where artistes stage-manage their day-to-day activities. Socialites and bloggers especially are known for this. Hiring venues where they consider are hot for their photo shoots so that they can then be the envy of the town when they talk about it.

This has translated to people photo-shopping, cropping and stage managing their pictures just to look cool.

At this rate, social media users will start hiring brand managers to manage their social media accounts.

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