​Since the introduction of social media with sites such as MySpace, creatives, primarily music artists, saw the potential of success by using these platforms. That potential continues today. Social media has become a tool companies and business people everywhere have started to take advantage of; and it is a crucial part in taking a product, song, or brand to the next level. We see this with the rise of Instagram influencers. Having a following on social media could now turn into a full-time career and this is all because brands are noticing the power of these platforms. 

It is now nearly impossible to scroll though Instagram without seeing a sponsored post. According to the BBC, Kylie Jenner makes $1.2 million per sponsored post. Some may ask, why are companies paying influencers so much for a post? The fact of the matter is, when users follow their favorite personalities, they are likely to want to relate to the influencer and therefore when we see someone like Kylie Jenner post about a product, many are going to be more interested in the product as opposed to seeing it in a regular advertisement. 

Not only does social media play a hand in helping brands, it can also heavily influence the music industry. Before the reign of social media, artists needed the push and power of a huge music label to make it in the industry. With social media, that is no longer necessary. Artists now have the freedom to post on platforms like SoundCloud, YouTube, and more to get public attention. 

Just this year, rapper Lil Nas X has achieved history-making success with his hit song ‘Old Town Road.’ It is hard to find someone who hasn’t at least heard the song once. The song’s success is due to the app TikTok, which has found immense popularity in the last two years. The song went viral on the app after the #yeeyeejuice challenge became popular on TikTok with users using Old Town Road in their videos. This challenge is without a doubt the reason that this song went viral and shot it to the top of the Billboard charts. The song went on to become the longest running #1 song of all-time on the Billboard’s Hot100 chart, with 17 weeks at the top spot. 
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With social media having so much influence, it is important for companies to recognize that they no longer have all the power. It is better for them to be in tune with the online trends because it will only serve to benefit them in the long run.

How to project your aesthetic onto your page
By: Erin Klein​

You're telling a "story" about yourself so make it interesting. 
By: Macey Klipp

As Instagram continues to organize feeds based on what they think users want to see, many posts get missed and buried in the shuffle. Instagram feeds used to show posts in their chronological order, so if a user checked their feed they would see photos in the order they were posted. Now, Instagram’s algorithm determines what posts a user sees. This causes many posts to go “unliked.” However, the use of Instagram stories can combat this by utilizing five key features to reach a bigger audience and increase engagement. 

REACH MORE PEOPLE
I have around 600 followers, but only reach upwards of 100 “likes” on photos. I have tried posting at different times, different types of photos, videos, but the majority of my posts are still getting missed. When I repost the same photo on my story alerting my followers that I made a new post, it generally receives more “likes” and more opportunities for engagement.

USE GIFS, VISUALLY APPEALING TEXT, MUSIC, MENTIONS, LOCATIONS
Instagram stories have a lot of multimedia features that allows users to add their own personal touch to their story post. Users can add gifs, stickers, different fonts, different color text, allow users to write with their fingers, add snippets of songs, tag other accounts, and add a location, just to name a few. Adding these elements to the posts enhances the creativity and a personal touch to the posts rather than just seeing a photo. 

ADD TO HIGHLIGHTS
When a user posts a photo to the feed, it remains on the feed and over time gets pushed lower on the user’s page. But, with the use of stories, users have the option to add the post to their “highlights.”Stories on Instagram are only available for 24 hours, but adding the story to a highlight makes it available as long as the user wishes. Stories also go into the users archives and can be added to highlights even after 24 hours. Highlights appears as different categories at the top of a person's profile. Having this at the top of a profile will make it more likely to be seen. Users can add stories to their highlights as part of a collection or just to emphasize a particular story. For example, I have a highlight called “Disney” where I can keep all of my stories pertaining to Disney in one organized place.

SEE WHO IS ACTUALLY SEEING YOUR STORY POSTS
Stories on Instagram are like stories on Snapchat. You can see exactly who is viewing your post. I find it very interesting that more people view my story than like my post. Plain and simple, Instagram stories allow for easier access to my followers. To see my posts, followers may have to scroll to find it versus stories that are available at the top of the homepage. A user was able to see exactly who viewed their story even after the 24-hour period that it was live on a profile. Instagram just recently changed this feature. A user is still able to see who viewed their story, but after 24 hours it changes to just a number of how many views the story received.

“SHARE TO YOUR STORY”
Instagram has a feature that allows its users to share other users posts and stories to an individual story. The feature “share to your story” is used to repost celebrities, meme pages, friends, family, food, and everything in between. This feature can also be used to repost a user’s photos to their own story to gain more attention. A user can share as many posts as they would like to their story and this often encourages other users to go and “like” or comment on the post. 

I personally use Instagram stories over posting a photo to my page due to the changed algorithm. I have noticed that these five features of Instagram stories have helped me connect better with my followers, have my posts seen by more people, and allow me to use the multimedia features to add a creative touch.    

What PR pros can learn from about social media from Roma
By: Brelio Lozano

Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

Engagement, not follower count is the true metric for how well your social media channels are doing. For Roma, they recognized that the only way to build on the brand and empower their content would be by getting direct feedback from their fans. By going to the source, Roma was able to truly understand the wants, needs and interests of those who interact with their channels.

Using these three guiding principals, Roma’s social media channels rose from 5 million to 15 million social media followers in just three years. However, staying stagnant in this industry never works, and Roma is already pushing the envelope in terms of what football social media teams can do on their platforms. 

Roma is leaving strange and meme videos in the past, and has started doing campaigns and initiatives that benefit third parties. From a series called “Team of the Day,” to sharing images of missing children alongside straightforward player announcement videos to raise awareness, the effects of their social good campaigns were profound, with a number of children were found safe and returned to their loved ones.  

Click here to read more about “The Inside Story Of A Social Media Changing Football’s Face.”

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Behind-the-scenes of styling a celebrity before they walk the red carpet
By: Megumi Murphy

Finding a job after college may not be easy for everybody. And for someone with a liberal arts degree, you may feel as though your only options are within the market of the major you studied. Well that is just one of the many misconceptions about a liberal arts degree. A common response to majoring in a liberal arts discipline is, “what can you do with that degree?” Most people can’t think of many job opportunities other than to teach that subject in schools. What many don’t know is that as a liberal arts major, the skills you learn in school are also applicable to the business world.

With a liberal arts degree you are learning many foundational skills that employers look for. Throughout your years as a student of the liberal arts, you are repeatedly polishing your critical thinking and ethical judgement skills. Participating in weekly discussions as well as group presentations in the classroom help you effectively express your ideas and communicate to others so when you go out into the real world, you will be more prepared to collaborate in and navigate through different social settings. 

According to AAC&U’s 2018 Employer Research Report, business executives and hiring managers view all of these skills as the most important skills from a college graduate. Oral communication was rated at 90% by hiring managers and 80% by business executives, while critical thinking was rated at 84% by hiring managers and 78% by business executives.
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As a liberal arts major, the soft skills you learn throughout college, like oral communication and critical thinking, cannot be taught in a training session, like Microsoft Excel can. The skills you learn are applicable beyond school and can make you highly valued across many different job fields.​

Have you ever uploaded a picture on Instagram and have only 35 of your 500 followers like it? Or have you ever noticed that some influencers may have more than 100,000 followers but notice they can never pass 100 likes? Welcome to the ghost zone. 

We’ve all tried to find our own ways of beating the algorithm on Instagram. Posting during “peak” hours, commenting back quickly or using popular hashtags. It’s the final boss battle that we can never seem to beat. But what if I told you that there’s one more factor that could be affecting where your posts show up on a feed? I like to call them, ghost followers. 

Ghost followers, in simple terms, are the followers that followed you not to engage with your account. They’re there to simply admire your profile or mute you once you follow back. They boost follower numbers up but keep your numbers low in terms of engagement. 

If you received 20 likes but have only 50 followers, that means your engagement rate shoots up to about 40%. Bonus points if you get comments. If you have 1,000 followers and only 200 likes, that’s only a 5% engagement rate. Instagram’s mysterious algorithm will assume you purchased followers or are not engaging back and push your post to the bottom of the feed. 

In the past, having more than 1,000 followers allowed you to monetize. Now, prestige brands looking to collaborate are looking at engagement rates. There’s no point in paying someone with thousands of followers if their reach doesn’t actually include those followers. It diminishes credibility and authenticity of your brand. 

I like to take a good look at my followers every 50 new ones or so and try to remember the last time we mutually boosted my engagement numbers. Do they watch my stories and not like my posts? Do they only like my posts when it’s good content? When was the last time this account was active? Do I actually like their content? If any of the responses bring back something I’m unhappy about, delete and unfollow. 

Thankfully Instagram added a feature that allows you to remove a follower without blocking. All you have to do is click on the far bottom right corner to view your profile, then click on your followers list to check out who’s following you. Click on the three dots to remove any ghost followers. Easy, and no one has to know. 

This technique is especially good for any brand that throws “follow” parties to boost their numbers. Many new ones will never interact with the account but others might. As a brand it may be more difficult to figure out who to clean out, especially when the following is so big. But it’s worth sitting down to remove spam and inactive accounts. It balances numbers and protects brands. 

So next time you want to follow-for-follow someone ask yourself, is it worth risking my engagement numbers? ​

Oh, Instagram. The virtual world of photos, videos, stories, and your occasional follow-for-follow users. Instagram has become the outlet we use to show people we truly do have lives, and not just sit in our rooms all day. It’s the scrapbook of our lives without the scraps or the book. But sometimes we, as users, can get a little too contrived in presenting how we want to be seen on Instagram. A lot of users aim to be “aesthetically pleasing.” But is there a certain line that can be crossed by being too aesthetic and not authentic enough? 

Remember when “like-for-like” was a trend for a time? Where users would spam each other with likes on each photo just to raise the number of likes people would see when they came across it? People nowadays still love a good “like” count. But now, a lot of people have shifted their focus from the numbers to how aesthetically pleasing their feed can be. From a minimalistic-type feed, to a neon-centric layout, many people tend to differ in what they consider to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. 

Take fashion blogger and YouTuber, Weylie Hoang, for example. Her inner passion for being one with nature reflects in her Instagram feed as an autumn, rustic aesthetic. ​