Social Media Final Paper

2020 has been one trainwreck of a year. In January, we lost one of our global sports icons, Kobe Bryant, in tragic fashion, and it only got worse with COVID-19 migrating to the United States and being spread throughout the country. People are dying from the virus worldwide, with over 100,000 coronavirus related deaths in the United States, healthcare professionals risking their own lives working countless hours daily and weekly to take care and provide treatment to those hospitalized by the virus. Our way of life has changed dramatically. We are going to school online via zoom, we are social distancing from others by not going out into public spaces, for us college students we are back at home living with our parents like its high school all over again, professional sports leagues have shut down operations, and much more that has changed our daily routines and how we consistently went about our lives. We are starting to live in a new normal of being quarantined at home and doing all communication with others digitally, rather it be zoom, facetime, or through social media. Let’s talk about social media, specifically social media use since the COVID-19 outbreak changed our daily way of life. Social media use is up 20% on all social media platforms, specifically Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok since the outbreak, and as some may have preached that this is a time to disconnect from social media and get back in touch with our families and using the time to relax and rejuvenate, there is evidence that shows that social media use has skyrocketed due to the outbreak and that it is essential we are using social media during this time. There have been several social media trends and campaigns that have been put into place over the past couple months that would not be relevant if it were not for unprecedented times, but research shows that our social media use is important during this time because not only will we stay connected through social media as we cannot see each other face to face, but we can make a difference through social media to help those who are struggling and those who have been directly impacted by this pandemic. For my project I researched the social media phenomenon of the #AllinChallenge that is challenging every athlete, team owner, league, celebrity, and artist to go “All In”. The All In Challenge is a digital fundraising effort providing food to kids, the elderly and frontline heroes during the COVID-19 Crisis. The fundraiser is sponsored by various organizations including Fanatics, ESPN, Fedex, Sports Illustrated, Simpleauctionsite.com, and iheartradio with the goal of raising money with the help of sports professionals and celebrities for charities including Meals on Wheels, No Kid Hungry, America’s Food Fund and others that are supporting families throughout the COVID-19 Crisis. Those the take the challenge donate their time and talents to raising money for charities that are supporting people facing food shortages during COVID-19. I have analyzed 50 #AllinChallenge posts from actors, musicians, Tik Tok stars, athletes, and other celebrities contributing to the challenge, looking for trends to indicate this is an effective method of meeting the goal of the challenge to reach $100 million. Essentially the fundraiser is an auction. Funds are raised by bidding on packages offered by celebrities. The prize goes to the highest bidder. Not too long ago, a fundraiser like this wouldn’t have been possible. Social media has forged a web of connections around the country and the world. I wanted to learn if activating a national audience to fight the COVID-19 crisis within the United States would be effective. I have used the social media concepts of gift economy, spreadability, and stickiness to create a deeper analysis of the data I have collected from the fifty #AllInChallenge posts to answer my research question of “will having celebrities, athletes, and other notable figures network together for the current social media trend of, #AllInChallenge, be successful of spreading its message to the rest of social media viewers?” With the power of social media, the #AllInChallenge has brought people and celebrities together around a common cause that can do a lot of good for those in need during a global crisis, however, while the results have been strong, my research indicates that with a few modifications, the outreach could be improved.

Literature Review

Social media has been a prominent component of a lot of people’s lives for over ten years now, and the addition of different social media platforms over this past decade such as Instagram, Snapchat, and now Tik Tok has created the opportunity for social media to evolve over this time. Social media has transformed into a place where we can find news stories, latest trends, posts from our friends, family, and celebrities, as well as a place where we can share what we view and what we post with our individual followings. Through research done by analysts on what has made social media a place that has been so convenient in sharing information, as well as being a great place to market, promote, and endorse different posts, companies, brands, celebrities, news stories, and much more, there has been theories and principles developed on how social media functions. Through the many devices that are used to dissect all that takes place on social media platforms, the three principles that take place in social media that we have studied throughout the course of Social Media & Society, that includes gift economy, spreadability, and stickiness, are devices that show how posts and stories spread across social media platforms, and how they play a part in social media being a phenomenal tool to use for marketing.

In an article titled, “How to Thrive in Social Media’s Gift Economy,” published by Harvard Business Review, author of the article, Mark Bonchek, discusses how gift economies are used to decipher what does, and what doesn’t, work on social media, and explains how the gift economy provides insight on “what brands can do to be more successful” across social media platforms (Bonchek). He also explains how social media “are fundamentally gift economies” where rather than exchanging transactions and financial currencies, it is a place where we can exchange “social currencies” along with “cultivating relationships” (Bonchek). Even though social media is a great place to promote and market your brand, brands have difficulties promoting themselves on the various social media platforms because they do not attain financial gain through their posts, but interactions with the general public of social media users. Bonchek’s opinion can be backed up by Megan Tilley in an article she wrote for Copypress titled, “The Gift Economy and Social Media Marketing,” Tilley discusses that the gift economy can also be referred to as the “cultural economy” and that the system is set up where the gift economy trades “services for personal connection” rather than for money (Tilley). Social media was established to connect people together through the internet to remain in touch and communicate with each other when we cannot physically be with each other, and while social media has evolved over the years, and can be used to promote campaigns, brands, and movements, social media still is a place to exchange services for personal communication, and that’s where the gift economy plays a role.

Another key component of how social media functions is spreadability. Spreadability is used in social media, specifically marketing that takes place on social media, and represents how information circulates and is distributed on social media platforms. In an excerpt in the book, “Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture,” contributed to by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, it is mentioned how spreadability disperses content widely through social media platforms (Jenkins, Ford, Green). In an article written by Jackson DeMos for the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, he gives an overview of the collaborated piece written by Jenkins, Ford, and Green about the principle of spreadability, gives his own analysis discussing how spreadability refers to the potential social media viewers and audiences have to “share content for their own purposes” and that this may happen with or without the “permission of rights holders” (DeMos). With social media being a platform where we can share anything that is posted on to a particular platform, we can inform others around us of news stories, trends, phenomenons, and a lot more with the people we are connected with in ways that would not be possible if we were not all networked together. Basically, by us sharing content on social media, we become a form of marketers and promoters ourselves, but does that not mean it will relate to businesses or brands that we usually think of when the terms “marketing” and “promotion” are thrown in our direction. We can share information and in our own way market it by how we share it and promote it with those we are networked with.

Stickiness is a social media principle that is used in a variety of ways on social media platforms, and something that directly relates to the topic of this paper. Stickiness is in contrast with spreadability and is directly used with marketing on social media. The “sticky content” needs to be shareable content that entices its social media audience to take action on the matter. This can directly relate to the #AllInChallenge due to that it can be shareable because of the concept of the trend and can be content that action must be taken by viewers to remain alive and relevant. For content to be “sticky,” it must resonate with its target audience. In an article published by Talk Business, written by contributor, Dominic Lill, Lill discusses that for a social media post or campaign to be sticky and resonate with its target audience, it has to have creativity, be posted on multiple social media platforms, advertised, and have “feedback loops and reviews” (Lill). The “feedback loops and reviews” means have comments set up for viewers and to take those comments serious because that is there initial reaction to the post at the spur of the moment. For the content to be sticky, it needs to be reacted to by its viewers so changes can be made if necessary, to improve the promotion of the content and to have viewer retention.

Methodology/Research Question

Original Methodology:

What I decided to do was to look at fifty of the most recent posts on Instagram that posted about the #AllinChallenge. I looked whether they used a video or an illustrative ad to make their announcement that they were going to participate in the trend, whether they announced the prize they were offering to the winner of their sweepstakes or to the highest bidder of their auction, depending on if they were setting up a raffle to win a sweepstakes or giving their prize to their highest bidder on their auction, whether they posted a link to get to the All In Challenge website so that the viewer could enter the sweepstakes or post a bid efficiently without having to go and find the link which may make the viewer uninterested at that point, as well as seeing if the celebrity or notable figure nominated others to participate in the challenge which would increase the trend and get more people to take action in donating money to the fundraiser. I made sure in the fifty recent posts I would look at that were posts about the #AllinChallenge were posted by the verified account of the celebrity or recognizable brands.

Research Question: Are these celebrities/athletes etc. promoting the #AllinChallenge trend in the most effective ways in their posts?

I picked the first fifty verified posts, all from Instagram, for my data and analysis of the data. The data includes:

•        15 Professional Athletes

•        8 Actors/Actresses

•        10 Musicians

•        3 TV Hosts

•        2 Bands

•        2 Companies

•        3 Professional Sports Franchises

•        3 Tik Tok Stars

•        Cast of Friends

•        1 Businessman

•        1 Television Network

•        1 Model

Specifically, these are the celebrities/athletes/brands/and more that I used:

Athletes

·       Kevin Durant (NBA)

·       Peyton Manning (NFL)

·       Tom Brady (NFL)

·       Jack Nicklaus (Golf)

·       Alex Rodriguez (MLB)

·       Zach Randolph (NBA)

·       David Beckham (Soccer)

·       Mike Conley (NBA)

·       Tony Hawk (Skateboarder)

·       Todd Gurley (NFL)

·       Patrick Mahomes (NFL)

·       Jared Goff (NFL)

·       Bubba Watson (Golf)

·       Coco Gauff (Tennis)

·       Novak Djokovic (Tennis)

Musicians

·       Camila Cabello

·       Shawn Mendes

·       Romeo Santos

·       Meek Mill

·       Mariah Carey

·       Megan Thee Stallion

·       Ariana Grande

·       Madonna

·       Joey Fatone

·       DJ Khaled

Actors

·       Kevin Hart

·       Ryan Reynolds

·       Hugh Jackman

·       Alfonso Ribeiro

·       Leonardo DiCaprio

·       Chris Pratt

·       Chris Evans

·       Cedric The Entertainer

Tik Tok “Stars”

·       Charli D’Amelio

·       Dixie D’Amelio

·       Addison Rae

TV Hosts

·       Jimmy Kimmel

·       Ellen DeGeneres

·       Dr. Oz

Musical Bands

·       Lady Antebellum

·       Pearl Jam

TV Show Cast

·       Cast of Friends (Posted by Actor Matthew Perry on behalf of the cast of Friends

Models

·       Gisele

Businessman

·       Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft)

Professional Sports Franchises

·       Philadelphia Flyers (NHL)

·       Vegas Golden Knights (NHL)

·       Denver Nuggets (NBA)

Companies

·       Walmart

·       State Farm

Television Networks

·       YES Network

It may not be completely necessary of me to list out all 50 people whose posts I analyzed but I want to be thorough about the Instagram accounts that I used to gather my data.

I will be doing analysis on the fifty posts in my data set and analyzing whether they used the best marketing tools possible for marketing posts on social media or if there is room for improvement. 

Elements such as making the post appear personal, giving the viewer a convenient way to take action, what ways they used to keep the social media trend moving forward rather than have it come to a halt, and whether they listed an incentive to make the viewer have any form of interest in the post and the cause.

Revised Methodology:

I will still be using the same 50 posts that I took a look at in my original method and will be analyzing the four elements of how personal was the post, if an incentive was listed, if there is a link accessible and convenient if a viewer had an interest in taking action, and if the post nominated others to move the trend forward, as such with the “Ice Bucket Challenge” from a number of years ago.

However, changes in how I approach my analysis of the data I have gathered will be different than it was originally. I will be applying the social media concepts of gift economy, spreadability, and stickiness to provide a deeper analysis of the findings I found on Instagram. The analysis method I originally had was simple and was analysis that could probably be noticed by someone who has not taken a social media class. I will be providing a deeper analysis of my data set by explaining how those three concepts of gift economy, spreadability, and stickiness that I learned over the semester in social media class to give a deeper understanding behind this social media trend.

I have also changed my research question to “will having celebrities, athletes, and other notable figures network together for the current social media trend of, #AllinChallenge, be successful of spreading its message to the rest of social media viewers?”

In this next section, I will share my social media research findings and then in the next section provide a deeper analysis in the context of commonly accepted social media principles. I will connect the data I have collected with the social media principles of the gift economy, spreadability, and stickiness.

Data Collection and Analysis

After selecting the most recent verified 50 Instagram posts with the #AllinChallenge hashtag, I began my analysis by looking at post content and structure. Since my posts were all of celebrities, the content detailed what they were offering if they were participating in an auction. There were experiences like have lunch with Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of his new movie or a free skateboarding lesson with Tony Hawk. With Instagram, posts either contain an image or a video, and of the 50 posts I looked at, 39 celebrities used video to make a personal statement of what they were offering in the challenge. The other 11 posts were illustrative ads. These usually included a brief description of the experience, a photo, the auction end date and the #AllinChallenge hashtag.

The videos felt more personal and, as a viewer, I felt more connected to the posts that included videos since these videos were personal pleas from the celebrity to either bid, donate or take part in the challenge. The ads were more like public service announcements and didn’t provoke the sense of excitement to participate that the videos did.

Next, I looked at how prominently the celebrity offering (the “prize”) was featured. Whether it was in the video or in the caption, 47 of the 50 #AllinChallenge Instagram posts I looked at promoted the prize and went into vivid detail to entice the viewer. Three posts didn’t mention a prize but urged the viewer to donate. Clearly the “prizes” were deemed valuable since they were the main focus of nearly all of the posts.

I believe the posts with the descriptions of the prizes were much more effective in getting people to participate, since the opportunities are all one-of-a-kind experiences offered by the celebrities who promoted them. The sweepstakes (raffles) and auctions create energy around donating that may inspire people to donate who otherwise might not. These “bidders” and sweepstakes entrants are giving to a good cause and if they’re lucky may win an experience with their favorite sports star or band.

I also looked for links within each post so people had an efficient way to take action. Of the 50 I looked at, 32 put the link to the site in the post, 11 put the link in their bio so people would need to go the celebrity’s main Instagram page first, and seven did not include a link at all.

Not including a link is a failure on the part of the poster since interested parties cannot easily take the next step to learn more or participate in the fundraiser. In fact, not including a link creates frustration if the viewer was interested enough to act. While having a direct link is best for the cause, having a way to connect, whether in the post or on a profile, is expected by the viewer.

Finally, I looked for evidence that the challenge had the potential to accelerate its growth and meet its goals. Nominating others is the key to helping the fundraiser trend on social media, which is what it’s all about if it’s going to meet its goal of reaching $100M.

Of the 50 posts I looked at, 27 celebrities nominated 1-3 others to take the challenge. To be honest, I expected more to celebrities to push the movement. These are the influencers in our society with huge social media followings. They should use their celebrity status to bring awareness to this cause to as many people as possible. Nominating other celebrities to take the challenge keeps the trend going and hopefully growing, and it’s this networking that determines how successful the fundraiser will be.

In addition to the analysis of the individual posts I had chosen to analyze, I also I applied several social media theories to the #AllinChallenge when determining its success.  I considered the theory of gift economy and whether it applied in this case.

A gift economy is one in which transactions aren’t strictly commercial. There is another deeper connection in the transaction. One side gives without expectation of a specific reward. They see a need, they seek to fill it with useful content or some other gift, and recipients who find value in the gift, offer an unsolicited gift in return. In social media, that can be a “like” or a “share” or a shoutout, for instance. In the case of the #AllinChallenge, celebrities are gifting unique experiences with no expectation of financial return for themselves. Recipients are willing to buy a raffle ticket for a chance at winning the ‘gift’ or are willing to bid on it. Giving without expectation of financial gain is what most fundraisers are founded on also, so I believe the gift economy is prevalent in regards to the #AllinChallenge since all proceeds go to selected charities. Both sides make a gift and the charities benefit.

I also considered “stickiness,” a concept that refers to how often viewers visit or how much time they spend on your page or account. For the most part, this isn’t the goal of the #AllinChallenge and rightfully so. While the sponsors have a webpage to show campaign progress, facilitate bidding and share the latest updates, the main point of the challenge is to get “everyone involved,” thus, the #AllinChallenge. To do that, they mainly need to focus on spreadability. But back to stickiness for a moment. There is one area where they could have applied a few “sticky” principles, such as in selecting a name for their challenge. One element of stickiness is the how concrete the concept is.

Compared to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that trended on social media a number of years ago, the #AllinChallenge is not as intuitive when it comes to understanding what it’s about. You can visualize pretty clearly what an ice bucket challenge is all about and one video post of it in action will confirm it. Everyone can envision an ice bucket. The #AllinChallenge is a bit more vague. In fact, when I first heard about it, I thought they meant the celebrities went “all in.” I wanted to know what that meant: Did they give all their money to charity? Did they donate all their future profits or 100% of their estate to a cause? To me, “all in” sounded like the last hand of a poker game. In fact, “All in” means they want EVERYONE to participate, not just celebrities, but anyone in a position to help. In fact, the name risks scaring away up-and-coming celebrities since they may not be in a position to go “all in.” Given the findings that just roughly half of participating celebrities called out other celebrities to take the challenge, made me think the name might not be sticky enough for them to remember when taking part themselves. It’s also not emphatically clear that the challenge is in response to COVID-19. However, COVID-19 may be another reason the celebrity turnout isn’t higher.

I also considered the concept of spreadability, dispersing content widely through social networks. This is the goal of the #AllinChallenge.” They strive to reach “everyone,” and want to motivate everyone to help their cause. Within the first 3 weeks of existence, the hashtag #Allinchallenge appeared in nearly 70,000 posts across four social media platforms. This is not exactly viral, but it’s strong, organic growth and it’s still growing. If 27 out of 50 celebrity participants challenge one to three other celebrities to take up the challenge and most of them do, the growth is still not yet exponential but trending upwards. The middling number of newly challenged presents a problem for spreading the word. We need 50 people to reach 50+ more people. Instead we have 50 people reaching 27+ people. Still, more than $32M have been raised to help feed people impacted by COVID-19, which is a strong response and better than doing nothing.

Conclusion

I began this project with an interest in analyzing a social media phenomenon, especially a recent phenomenon.  I chose the #AllinChallenge since it is timely in trying to raise funds for people facing food shortages due to COVID-19. I liked that it involved celebrities and that a lot of sports teams were getting involved. I assumed that celebrities, since they are on social media a lot, are influencers and have large followings, would make the trend an instant success. I expected their posts to be examples of best practices in social media and for the trend to go viral during the course of this project. In fact, I discovered that not all celebrities are social media experts and other factors also come into play.

Across the 50 posts I analyzed, it became clear that social media skills are not a given even if one is a celebrity. Some celebrities made it difficult to get to the challenge site in order to participate and still others didn’t include a link at all. But even more surprising was how some current social media theories applied to this data.

For instance, social media is often seen as operating as a gift society and there is strong evidence of that here. In a gift economy, people give gifts of value without an explicit agreement of reciprocity. People give because they want to and recipients who feel compelled to respond, do so. This gift economy culture is visible in the #Allinchallenge as celebrities are donating experiences they will be part of with no expectation of financial reward for themselves. In fact, many people will bid on an auction or buy a raffle ticket to win an experience even though their chance of winning is small. Both sides are giving gifts without the expectation they will receive something of equal value in return. This is the nature of the gift economy.

I also analyzed the phenomenon by considering the principles of stickiness and spreadability. While stickiness in marketing can refer to a destination such as a blog post that users and viewers like to spend time on, it can also refer to certain concepts that “stick with” people that help a post or a destination get amplified. One author in Adweek stated that having a concrete concept that can be visualized, “sex vs. love,” for instance, made it easier to stick in people’s minds and get shared, boosting its chance of trending. I noticed that the name #Allinchallenge was not an overtly concrete name and in fact was a bit ambiguous. Does it mean they want donors to give everything or does it mean they want everyone to be a donor? Of course, it’s the latter, but the hashtag could be more explicit. It also doesn’t make clear that it’s a fundraiser for multiple charitable organizations focused on providing food so these charities can support those affected by COVID-19. This may have caused the fundraiser to get a slow start, but I think it will overcome this and meet its ambitious goal.

I also looked for spreadability, and was slightly surprised here too. I anticipated that since it was full of celebrities, it would be an overnight success. The phenomenon is still trending and donations keep flowing in, but this can’t be described as going viral overnight. The network is there, but the speed at which people are joining the cause is not accelerating as fast as I would have expected. That said, it is early days and I believe the trend will continue to gather momentum as more teams and celebrities join and as some of the higher profile celebrity experiences are closer to the end of their auctions.

I sought to learn whether having celebrities and athletes networking together for the social media fundraiser, the #AllinChallenge, would cause it to trend and meet it’s $100 million goal for charity. While I originally expected it to succeed quickly, I now realize that bringing the networks of celebrities, athletes and artists together isn’t a guarantee of overnight success. I believe it will still meet its goal, but the early days will be a slow climb that eventually accelerates in success.

When it comes to answering the research question of “will having celebrities, athletes, and other notable figures network together for the current social media trend of, #AllinChallenge, be successful of spreading its message to the rest of social media viewers,” the answer is yes and no. Some were effective in grabbing the attention of the target audience, but other posts lack the spreadability and stickiness to create viewer retention and action.

Literature Review References

Bonchek, Mark. “How to Thrive in Social Media's Gift Economy.” Harvard Business Review, 23 July 2014, hbr.org/2012/08/understanding-social-medias-gi.

DeMos, Jackson. “Defining Spreadability.” USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, 13 Jan. 2014, annenberg.usc.edu/news/published/defining-spreadability.

Jenkins, Henry, et al. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. NYU Press, 2013.

Lill, Dominic. “The Stickiness of Social: Why Every Business Needs Social Media.” Talk Business, 8 Dec. 2018, www.talk-business.co.uk/2017/04/24/stickiness-social-every-business-needs-social-media/.

Tilley, Megan. “The Gift Economy and Social Media Marketing - Content Marketing Agency: Content Marketing Services by CopyPress.” Content Marketing Agency | Content Marketing Services by CopyPress, 28 Feb. 2020, www.copypress.com/blog/gift-economy-social-media-marketing/.