Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Another Life to Manage

Social media has become an essential element of the marketing platform of celebrities.  According to the Wall Street Journal article titled “Behind That Celebrity Tweet,” social-media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr are helping folks in the entertainment and sports industries to “tout” themselves.  The article describes how social networks are devising business plans that will appeal to celebrities who want to make money from their online presence.  Social media companies will even search for actors or musicians who have been out of the spotlight for a while and create business plans that will entice these once-famous stars to utilize the web to promote themselves.  
While I’ll admit that employing social media as a marketing tool is actually an ingenious idea, I’m not sure that I like the idea of celebrities finding other methods to promote themselves.  Prior to the social media age, actors were promoting movies, athletes were promoting sports teams, and musicians were promoting albums.  Events were created to market movies, Championship Series or new albums.  The actors, athletes and musicians were participants in these events.  Now, however it seems that these actors, athletes, musicians, etc. have become the main event on each of their respective social media sites.  In essence, with the help of social media, these people have created another (online) life for themselves.  Celebrity figures have become their own brand.  Although this is an amazing business plan, I personally am not sure that I can buy into the idea of celebrities and self-promoting personal sites.  
On the other hand, maybe I just need to spend more time beefing up my own Facebook page …

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