Revised 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 has to resonate with its target audience. In an article published by Talk Business, written by an unknown contributor for the website, it 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” (Talk Business). 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.