User:Saraf18/sandbox

Social Media Influencer also known as Opinion Leader or micro-celebrity is an individual who has a large audience or fan base on their social media platform. Social Media is a large platform that allows users to create and broadcast their own content, engage with online users, and gain mass audience. Social Media is used for mass communication between influencers and other online users, social media influencers use social media as a marketing strategy to build their online identity. The number of social media influencers have increased through the years of new innovations in social media, having many social media networking channels creates more space for individuals to create, share, and promote their content and build their success. The emerging new influencer community is powerful in creating high quality content and targeting specific audiences, social media influencers seek to engage with higher social media influencers and brands to increase their exposure and widely distribute their content through the social media platforms.

Two-Step Flow of Communication
The two-step flow of communication was founded by The People's Choice, Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet proposed that social media influencers or opinion leaders of a digital platform have the ability to sell ideas and products to their mass audiences who are then coaxed and led to believe what is being advertised to be authentic. Information and ideas flow from print to digital media and are widely dispersed through word-of-mouth by social media influencers. The two-step flow of communication is the process of mass media influencing online users' decision making. Opinion leaders have a personal influence on their mass audiences, they have the power to take a media's message and alter it in a particular order to advertise and present it to their audiences. Opinion leaders are quite influential in getting people to change their attitudes and behaviours. Social media influencers have the ability to spread media information they receive to their large audiences and give that information more meaning and value by promoting it on their social media platforms. Social media influencers or micro-celebrities create content that mirrors authenticity, the way content is advertised and structured determines how audiences view and trust online promoters. Lazarsfeld and his collaborators suggested that messages from the media reach opinion leaders, who then pass on what they read or hear to followers who look at them as a source of guidance and social confirmation. A minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers are important to the formation of public opinion. It has been found that a large cascade of influence is driven not by influentials but by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals.

Marketing Strategy
Social Media is known as a large platform and open space that is free to be accessed by everyone, this online space contributes as a marketing strategy for online users to sell and promote products, brands, and their online persona, as well help with the growth of audience and maintain a strong online reputation. Social media influencers grow their success and audience by portraying their passion on social media, they gain immense internet popularity, allowing them to shape and influence audience opinions on matters through blog posts, videos, pictures, and tweets. Through the evolution of new technologies and media, the usage of mobile devices increased and consumers spend more time on online social networks, influencer marketing had been found as an authentic marketing channel to reach the consumers. Social media influencers use their online profiles to self-brand, they hire a team to help produce quality content, and they collaborate with brands to expand their exposure and audience.

Self-branding
Social media influencers use a technique called; Self-branding also known as personal branding to help promote and grow their online image, content, and audience. Users of the Web 2.0 who would like to grow their image or brand on social media platforms such as; Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube ensure that they promote who they would like viewers to see and remember them as. Self-branding is a strategy that is used by an individual who wishes to build their online fan base and image by creating and promoting a personalized internet persona that helps the market and other online users perceive and remember them as the image they are advertising. The key to success for a social media influencer is to promote and market their image of who they want their audience to know and admire them as. Promoting a high quality and authentic online personality will increase the social media influencer's chances at higher online exposure and increase their fan base.

Collaboration with Brands
Social media influencers collaborate with clothing and health brands to grow both the influencer's and brand's image and audience. Brands target influencers with a mass audience due to believing that they have a strong connection and trust with their online followers and fan base, brands choose influencers with a specific image or reputation that would perfectly fit and advertise their products to their audiences. Brands search for those who are the most influential on social networking sites in order to promote and sell their products successfully. Brands compensate social media influencers or internet celebrities, to create content on behalf of brands or provide endorsement for brands. Brands view social media influencers as an additional advertisement channel. Collaborating with brands is known as a successful marketing strategy to allow social media influencers to promote fashion and health products that fit their online identity. Social media influencers carefully choose who to collaborate with, brands who sell health or dietary products aim to collaborate with healthy fitness internet personas or influencers. Social media influencers who are healthy, active, and promote how-to's of getting the perfect body are the ones to collaborate with health and fitness brands. Brands who collaborate with social media influencers control the production of an image or post where the social media influencer is advertising their brand, from visual language, timing of the post, and exact wording. Brands are very specific when it comes to choosing social media influencers to promote their products, the brand must fit the social media influencer's online image correctly in order to promote their products successfully. Social media influencers who have a strong connection and trust with their mass audience will ensure to persuade audience members to buy and believe what is being promoted online. The more engagement an influencer has on their online profiles the more meaningful they are for brands, as it indicates that their followers, who are ideally the brand's target group, are actively involved and will participate in sharing the content with others and purchase what is being promoted by the highly influential individuals they look up to and trust.

Backstage Labour
Backstage labour is a collaborative work effort done by a group of individuals that are also referred to as a technical crew that works behind the scenes of the production of a picture or video. The backstage team ensures that a picture or video is produced in a particular way to promote or advertise a specific message by using particular clothing, lighting, makeup, and poses. Social media influencer profiles are mainly controlled by backstage labour, the team constructs a post to fit the influencer's internet persona and target large audiences. When social media influencers collaborate with brands and are compensated for promoting the brands' products to their own followers or audience, they hire photographers, make-up artists, and fashion stylists in order to produce a picture that successfully advertises the product. Social media influencers hire a team that works behind the scenes of their online profiles, this is one of the marketing strategies that help influencers grow their online profiles and produce quality content that fits their online persona and advertises particular messages and brands to their mass audiences. By social media influencers having a team that helps them build and structure their online profiles, it is known as controlled content. Social media profiles produce content that is of high quality and authentic, this is due to backstage labour having control over what the social media influencer is to promote and how to promote content in order to get the right message out to their followers. Backstage labour is to help the social media influencer build an internet persona in a way to get the attention of other online users, they try to create an authentic online persona, this strategy is to build a trustful relationship between the social media influencer and their followers. Social media influencers promote a trustful and authentic internet persona with the help of backstage labour who control and operate what is to be promoted on their online profiles. Social media influencers' content and online profiles are controlled by a backstage team that makes decisions on how to promote and what to promote on their online profiles. Controlled online profiles is a marketing strategy to successfully help social media influencers gain followers and build an authentic persona for their followers to admire and trust when advertising products or their own brand.

Audience participate in Free Labour
Free labour also referred to as fan labour, digital labor, or fandom of labour is one of many successful marketing strategies that help social media influencers' profiles succeed and widely distribute on the web. Mass audience also referred to as followers participate in free labour by liking, commenting, and sharing posts and information of social media influencers they admire to their friends. Followers are not compensated for their contribution of advertising social media profiles, they are not aware that they are helping social media influencers and opinion leaders grow their image and expand their audiences. Engagement on the Social Web is where audiences, customers, or stakeholders become participants rather than viewers. Engagement, meaning the audience or followers are willing to take their time and energy to talk about the social media influencer and what they are promoting and share that information with others, this is known as a marketing strategy seen on social media to grow the success of the social media influencer.

Becoming a Social Media Influencer
Individuals who have a passion or are inspired to build their online identity and/or brand turn to social media to develop high quality online personas and grow their exposure and audience. The increase of social media use and its innovations have led to an increase of social media influencers, social media marketing has become more competitive and commercially-saturated, which has made becoming a social media influencer difficult at times.

Success
Individuals find social media as a simple and free way to start developing and growing their online profiles and brands due to social media having various network sites to create and share their content such as; Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Social media network sites are free to use and can be accessed by anyone, this is one of the reasons why individuals turn to social media to market their online personas and brands. Once an individual turns to a social media networking channel to create and share content and build their online audience, the most important factor of success is to have a high Return on Investment also referred to as; ROI. 77 percent of online marketers or social media influencers are using at least one social media channel to market their business, only 48 percent of businesses and social media influencers claim to see any ROI. Many individuals who try to use social media to build and develop their online profiles and/or brands, only a few find success and that it pays off to build a career from social media. It takes time and effort to build a successful social media presence; individuals need to have a thorough understanding of their target market, they need to carefully craft their messaging and time their posts adeptly, and on top of that, they need to be active consistently, engaging with their audience, sometimes for months or years, before they see a return on the investment. Individuals market their online identities successfully with the help of backstage labour, collaborating with brands or other social media influencers, and creating an authentic identity and loyal relationship between their audience, engaging in these marketing strategies shows an increase in their online success and exposure. Gaining success on social media in a rapid pace is difficult, one piece of viral content can quickly scale individuals' social media presence from “amateur” to “professional,” but the science on viral content is fairly limited. Even if they have all the “right” ingredients in place, there’s still an element of luck to their success. Social media allows users to freely create, share, and express their own content to the public, being passionate and consistent plays a great role in the individuals' success. The online success is entirely up to the user, they need to commit and excel in producing and promoting quality content that targets large audiences and increases their exposure. Individuals could become highly successful by using social media channels to promote their content, online identities, and/or brands, they need to use appropriate marketing strategies and be consistent and passionate about the work they develop and promote. Individuals who educate themselves about how to grow their online profiles and audience and gain knowledge of proper marketing strategies and tools from viewing profiles from already successful social media influencers expands their creativity and knowledge on how to build and promote their online profiles and/or brands.

Difficulty
Individuals find it difficult at times to get the exposure and mass audience they want when they start creating and sharing their content and promoting their online profiles and brands on social media networking sites. Individuals who turn to social media networking sites to build their online identities and brands will not break even their first month, both because it takes a long time to generate a significant following and because they will make many mistakes when they are first starting out. Reaching a positive Return on Investment is difficult, there is a high percentage of competition on social media when a high volume of individuals are trying to grow their online profiles at the same time. Without proper marketing tools, the individual will find it difficult to grow their online profile and audience alone. Individuals find it challenging to keep up with social media, other social media influencers take the spotlight and it is hard for new comers to develop their profile and get exposure. Individuals who want their online profiles to become successful and gain a mass audience will find it difficult if they do not properly engage with their audience. Individuals who do not stick to one appropriate social networking channel to promote their content, do not choose the best visual content formats that fit their profile such as; videos, images, gifs, and are poor in posting quality content at the most popular time will experience difficulty in gaining exposure and audience. During the process of creating an authentic internet persona it also determines what kind of audience the individual will target, they need to ensure to engage with their audience with authenticity and loyalty. An individual who is trying to become a social media influencer however, does not take the time or effort to know about their audience is their biggest obstacle to becoming a successful social media influencer with high engagement. If they do not know their audience well or take the time to engage with them, it means they do not know whom to target. Many new social media influencers believe that they should create profiles on more than one social networking site to expand their audience reach, this creates difficulty for the user having more responsibility on various social media platforms. Individuals who create an online profile on more than one social media networking channel find it difficult to manage multiple social media channels. Once an individual especially a new social media influencer finds out where their target audience spends the majority of their time, they will know where to focus their initial efforts. Individuals have a hard time to get likes and positive feedback from the public when they do not have an appropriate layout of their content, the lack of choosing the right visual content format will decrease their success due to having an unorganized profile with poor effort in producing quality content. Individuals who are just starting to build their online profiles and brands sometimes ignore the importance of posting their content at popular times, with poor knowledge of when is the best time to post and knowing when their audience is active will decrease their chances of high exposure and likability. It is always important to ensure to post during the peak visiting hours of their audience on social media. This will help boost their engagement rate. In other words, they must post their content when the majority of their followers are online. Individuals find it difficult and challenging to become successful on social media due to the high competition, making sure to follow appropriate marketing strategies and working with backstage labour teams will lead to higher success. New comers to social media experience challenges when trying to create and share their content to the public, it is important to engage with online users and expand their knowledge on how to build their online profiles and/or brands by learning from already successful social media influencers.