Self-Branding

Self-Branding, as Alice Marwick puts it, is a “promotional culture” where everyone is striving to promote and broadcast their personal brand to become, what Marwick calls, “micro-celebrities” of the top dogs. Essentially becoming a smaller, baby version of our dreams. You’ve got to start somewhere right?

My Experience with Self-Branding

I have experienced this drive to become a “micro-celebrity” myself. About six years ago I created a Youtube channel aimed to provide jazzy edits of the popular video game Call of Duty. I had dreams of becoming Youtube famous like Pewdiepie and WoodysGamertag. 

To get my name out there, I created as many social media platforms as I could to ensure my content was being broadcasted to the maximum audience. I linked my Facebook and Twitter accounts to my Youtube account so that whenever I uploaded a video, liked a video or even commented on a video, my viewers would see my name pop up on their screens. The system was simple, the more active I was, the more I was seen.

This active web of interaction between my content and my viewers, saw my subscriber and view counts skyrocketing (in my mind haha) I reached an “amazing” one hundred subscribers and peaked at 500 views. However, as work and school commitments increased, my ability to continue being active on social media diminished creating a stall in my self-branding. This sudden drop in activity resulted in my upward trending brand falling level and beginning to drop.

Key to Self-Branding

Like Marwick presents, through Tom Peters’ work, we’re all striving to establish our own micro equivalent of top dogs like the Nike swoosh and we all have the chance to stand out and be recognised thanks to the power of social media. Through my own experience, I had found that the key to continued success in “self-branding” is simply to remain as active as possible to ensure your best foot is always forward and your content is on as many screens as possible.

Living Through a Messenger

Have you ever heard your parents tell you that wouldn’t be able to live without your phone? I have… many times. Have you ever given any thought about it? I haven’t… until now. I asked myself the question of how important is this 14cmx7cm device in my everyday life? Could I live without? So over the last three days, I decided to limit my methods of communication to the Facebook Messenger app only in the hopes that I would finally have an answer to my nagging parent’s claims.

Cons

Over the last three days, I have encountered countless situations where face-to-face communication or verbal communication over the phone would be the practical and most suitable method of communication and so many complications surfaced due to my inability  to use such methods. The most common issues that I encountered were:

• Delay in communication.
• Misinterpretation of content.

Communicating with family and friends of a similar age range was relatively simple. There were very little delays in communication because they regularly checked their social media accounts. However, I experienced a great deal of communication delay with family and friends of an older age range as they’re not as active on their social media accounts, despite all having social media accounts. This meant getting hold of an older family member took quite some time.

Because I wasn’t communicating face-to-face, I often encountered problems with misinterpretations of both communication lines. Because there was no way to interpret facial expression and tone of voice, messages were often read in a variety of ways, causing complications and, in some cases, further delays in communication.

Through these experiences only, my chances of surviving in this world with nothing but this 14cmx7cm device seems very unlikely.

Pros

Despite experiencing various complications in the delay and misinterpretation of communication, I found, in one case, that an acquaintance of mine (that is VERY shy) had communicated more openly and freely due to the lack of face-to-face contact. This is where I find this little device to be so essential in our everyday life.

Whether we use Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Message, Instagram Direct Message or simply our phone’s SMS, the ability to reach out to people that we wouldn’t usually have to courage to do so is essential to expanding our social life.

Alice Marwick, in her work titled “The Public Domain: Social Surveillance in Everyday Life,” describes her idea of ‘Social Surveillance” where our social media accounts may broadcast a different version of ourselves. Marwick’s idea of ‘Social Surveillance’ translates to my experience with a drastic change in personality between a social media platform and real life.

Conclusion

I hate to say this but… My parents were right! I feel as though communicating only through a social media platform is way to complicated and, to get your genuine message across, verbal or visual contact must be present.

However, I don’t believe that communication via a social media platform isn’t useful at all. The ability to reach out and expand outside of our comfort zone with little to no risk of embarrassment is essential in expanding our social circle and bettering our social life.

So I guess what I should say is… Mum, Dad… you were kind of right.