The Selfie Culture and Social Media Marketing
The word selfie was added to mainstream dictionaries in 2013, and the number of selfies that people take is growing by the day – come on, admit it, you’re a selfie addict too. A study by Google in 2015, revealed that a whopping 24 billion selfies were uploaded by Google users to photo apps that year alone, which is equivalent to 13.7 petabytes (1 petabyte=1000 terabytes). Other studies claim that there are 1 million selfies taken per day.
Since the birth of the selfie, a lot of merchandise to take the perfect picture has appeared on the market. All new phone cameras are adding apps or features to improve/modify images with ease, and naturally, they include a selfie mode. In the UK alone, the most popular search in Google is for a selfie stick, with 27,100 searches per month, closely followed by Retrica, a selfie app with over 350 million users.
The explosion of the selfie culture has been clearly driven by celebrities, with examples such as this famous picture taken by Ellen Degeneres at the Oscars in 2014.
Currently, Kylie Jenner holds the record for the largest number of selfies, with her sisters Kim, Kendall and Khloe all appearing in the top 17. Last year, Kylie came second for the number of selfies shared with 190 after Miley Cyrus with 191.
Selfies and Brands
Selfies have allowed brands to gain a huge amount of social visibility. In the case of Ellen’s Oscar selfie, a variant of the picture captured the group using a Samsung phone while posing for more photos.
Multiple companies are now using the selfie as a way of promoting their products, and this teamed with Social Media allow them to work with social influencers to showcase everything from makeup to clothes, trips to specific places, etc.
Smaller brands have also discovered the use of the selfie and social media to their advantage, with many getting creative and asking their customers to share a selfie with either their brand logo, hashtag or product featuring in it, and by running a social media contest to get maximum exposure.
As well as a promotional aid, selfies can also help brands to connect better with their customers and their community, giving their brand a human touch.
Optimising the Selfie
If you’re looking to use the selfie as part of your digital marketing activities, using alt tags and a description in the image is a first key step, especially when using the picture in a blog post. You can also run some keyword research on the most popular terms and then use Google Images to see what type of results appear.
If you are using Instagram and Twitter as your social channels, pick the right hashtags to get additional social visibility. Find the trending topics using social analytics and piggyback on those that are having good traction, but be sure to make them relevant to your business.
When Selfies Go Viral
As you can imagine, fun content gets a significant amount of social shares. Recently, BoredPanda published the top 10 worst selfies where people forgot to check what was going on in the background before they took the snap.
A viral strategy like having something funny going on in the background can boost the views, shares, likes for your selfie while promoting your product in a more light-hearted way that will get people talking about your brand.
Selfie Day
National Selfie Day is said to have been created by DJ Rick McNeely from a radio station in Arlington TX on June 21, 2014, while other sources claim that is the BBC who came up with it in 2014.
Whoever is behind National Selfie Day, we think it should be celebrated, so we asked the selfie lovers amongst our staff at the IDHL Group, to share some of their best (and worst!) selfies with us.
Aren’t they a gorgeous bunch?! Happy Selfie Day!