Final- The Price of Shame

I was first introduced to this talk a few weeks ago in another class but I was happy to watch it again. Although it makes me sad and frustrated to watch, it's a message I need reminded of often. The reason it makes me sad and frustrated is because I can't believe how cruel, unsympathetic, and careless people are on the internet especially to absolute strangers. I know there's always the argument that you can't know for sure what someone is really meaning through type and that there is always room for misunderstanding but in many cases, the message is all too clear and obvious what they are "really trying to say". Of course, a perfect example of this is Monica Lewinsky's story.

How does social media desensitize?

First off, the key element of social media is immediacy. This is also an element of insensitivity because you can't ever fully understand something or feel for someone in a matter of seconds or even minutes. We see events and people as flashes across our screen and give ourselves about 3 seconds to make a conclusion about it. After the ball had been rolling on this scandal, it resulted in people just seeing her name or her photo and automatically making a judgement about her. The other manner in which social media is desensitized is that we don't have to face the person we are bashing, it isn't real enough to actually filter what you are saying. We somehow are able to ignore the fact that behind the profile picture or paparazzi photo, is an actual human being with feelings and experiences you will never know or understand; or at least not through a screen.

How can compassion displace shame on social media?

As Monica states, compassion needs to not only take effect in the online world, but in our real world culture as well.  As we begin to change the way we treat each other in real life and be more kind, that will start to seep into our online life as well. If a trend of positivity started to take over and there were more loving and uplifting comments, negative comments would lose their appeal. Trollers would stop popping in if they knew no one was interested in their negative comment. I know this is a cliche statement but I think bullies online need to be killed by kindness. Rather than people feeling entitled to inform someone of their opinion or wrongdoing, they should accept that it's okay to disagree with people and still go on with your life. All of these things are easier said then done which is why I said that it has to start within our culture and our own personalities.

What are you prepared to do?

I really liked how she said instead of thinking of it as your right to speech, think of it as a responsibility for your speech. I completely agree with her and I think sometimes we get so caught up in the freedom to say whatever we want, we forget how powerful our words really are for good or bad. My responsibility online is not taking everything I read and see as face value. "You can't judge a book by its cover" seems like a saying we've heard a million times yet we still don't seem to get it. Although I have never participated in public shaming someone or spreading hateful words or photos, I am guilty of the little things nearly everyday. Reading a blog post and assuming it's true, seeing a photo on Instagram and making a snap judgement, reading a rage post on Facebook and automatically picking a side. All of these things have to stop and it's not an overnight change. It's something I need to consciously challenge myself every day to stop judging, stop being negative, and spread more kindness and compassion.

Facebook Campaign Final Review

I'll admit from the very start, I was not excited about this project. I really don't care for Facebook and I don't think it is where a business thrives or at least not our business. I honestly believe most people don't spend time scrolling down their newsfeed anymore, so the only way to really get your page noticed is by paying for ad space, which we just don't see as something necessary to our business at this time. I also realized other pages that were similar to our business who did have a lot of page likes and follows, had been set up for some time and probably started at the primetime of Facebook. I promise I am not trying to justify my lack of full involvement in this project, I'm just being honest in my observations. 

Now, as far as following my original campaign plan, I think I did okay. I had two main goals; first to create a page that was inspiring, professional, positive, fun, romantic, and relatable. Second, to stand out as the best videographer in Southern Utah and show that he is following his dreams and the kind of person you would want to work with and support. I also added that I think it's really important to mention or tag the people who worked with him on the shoot. Not only does this help with our networking and relationships with other vendors, it also gets more eyes from fans of the other vendors. I think the first way I implemented these goals was in the way I wrote the posts that supplemented the photo or video I was posting. I tried to keep it short but upbeat and exciting. I also tried to include a call to action or a request somewhere in the post to try to get more engagement. Here are a couple examples of the posts I did that implemented those things.

I had suspected that my target audience would be females, ages 18-28 who were most likely engaged or in a serious relationship. My estimate was correct and that audience also happened to be the ones who engaged in our page the most as well. (See the insight capture below) I was at a loss with how to directly cater to this audience however I think the nature of our business naturally does that. We typically film weddings, bridals, love stories, and styled shoots with attractive couples. Women tend to love all of that stuff! (And yes I was being totally stereotypical right there). 

When I started this campaign, the page "likes" was at around 503. We are currently at 570 now. My original goal was to be at 1,000 likes by the end of the semester, so I clearly didn't reach that. Again, I attribute some of the cause to being a little late to the Facebook "rage party." Yet, the larger cause is my own shortcoming in not cross-promoting or reaching out to gain new followers more earnestly. The growth of attention we did get was an improvement over the last six months so I am happy with that (see insight photos below)

(the last three photos above show my page reach for the campaign)

Another part of my campaign plan was to post two to three times a week and implement both photos and videos as well as possibly sharing from other users' pages. Again, I fell short and only posted once a week, sometimes twice (a total of 17 posts from the start of this project). Not to make another excuse but this is a slow time for our business and I really had a hard time finding things to post without always doing a "throwback" or posting something personal. He finished up all of his fall/winter weddings just before this project and his spring/summer weddings haven't happened yet. With what I could post, I did try to do a fairly even mix of photos and videos to determine which yielded the best engagement and the result was inconclusive. I did, however notice a trend in the posts that did attain the most reach/engagement. They tended to be the ones that were shorter in length and something I described with words like, "new, exciting, different, and styled." 

(you can see above that my linked videos received better outcomes than photos or imported videos)

(the two photos above show which posts received the most attention)

The reason I think these posts "worked" is because they are short in length. I think most people are busy and if they see something labeled "new and exciting" and then also see that it is only 1-2 minutes long, they are much more willing and interested to watch. Unfortunately we can't always post short styled videos because we don't do them as often as weddings (because they are done for free and take a ton of planning). However, I do think going forward that maybe instead of always posting the full wedding highlight film, perhaps we can post a short "sneak peek" and try to push them to our website if they want to see the entire film. 

During this time, another thing we did was renovate our Instagram page. The first thing that was done was to create a second personal account so that going forward all posts on Red Tie Cinema contained only work-related posts. We also wanted to make it look more presentable and pleasing to the eye when you land on the page. At first, we lost a few followers because we posted so much trying to get it set up, however I think now it is a way better look for the business and something people will want to follow. We haven't really cross-promoted Facebook and Instagram which I know we should in the future, but we do try to send people to our website from Instagram by always mentioning "link in bio." I think Instagram is our main focus right now, it seems to be working a lot better for us versus Facebook and his posts get a lot more likes and comments than on Facebook. Another note to add is that he gets more inquiries(people interested in booking) from Instagram than Facebook as well. 

(screenshot of Instagram feed below)

My overall summary of the campaign is more or less disappointing. I know that I didn't put my full heart and effort into it, yet I was still disappointed that seemingly nobody liked our posts or felt the desire to comment or share. It is morbidly funny that the same 5-7 people like our posts each time and usually the only person to ever leave a comment is my mother-in-law (bless our tiny, dedicated group of fans). I guess I took it personally most of the time rather than realizing that people just don't have time to invest in it. I think that may be part of the reason I didn't dive in more was because I kept getting discouraged. I think I would need to carry out a solid campaign plan for longer than 3-4 months to see success. Especially on Facebook, I think growing an audience takes a lot longer and the more data you have to analyze, the more accurately you can determine what your followers respond to and what they don't. I do think the way I wrote the descriptions helped a lot and posting 2-3 times a week would be ideal to keep people interested without drowning them. 

I'm looking forward to the busy season for our business and to keep posting for my husband and hopefully gain more reach and followers over time. However, as I have mentioned a few times, we aren't truly invested in Facebook for advertising our business and I think that's totally legitimate. When someone submits an inquiry form through his website, there is a section they have to fill out asking, "how did you hear about us?" The top responses are internet search, a friend, another wedding vendor, and Instagram. Besides organic inquiries to our website, the number one way he books weddings, is when a photographer or wedding planner highly recommends his services. I think we have already found the secret to success and it is through networking and creating strong and positive relationships with other vendors and clients. This campaign plan has shown me that we shouldn't abandon Facebook or stop building it up, yet it has also proven to me that we need to direct more of our efforts to Google search optimization, Instagram, and of course continue our strong networking strategies.