The best influencers create content that informs, entertains, and inspires, and many have found solace in the communities that form around them. But for every sun, there is a shadow, and that shadow has a name: audience capture – a phenomenon where content creators become influenced by the audiences they’ve fostered and by what those audiences want to hear or see. Another phenomenon is brandification, where social media forces us to create online personas with which to connect. It’s also allowed branding to permeate parts of our lives it previously couldn’t touch.
Increasingly, even those of us who aren’t aspiring influencers are being encouraged to brandify. This, in turn, can cause us to become entrapped by the audience we rely on for feedback, even when that’s just our extended circle of 500 “close” followers. This looking-glass effect means we create an online facsimile of ourselves, churning out content to seek gratification from people we don’t truly connect to. Done well it can seem authentic, but more often it’s a world away from the connections and community most people crave and that got us onto social media in the first place.
PUBLISHED IN THE AGE, 26 JULY