The Best Way to Beat Left-Wing Social Media At Its Own Game Opinion
Posted: Feb 17, 2022 12:01 AM
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Remember when social media was fun? If you aren’t yet in your 30s you might not remember since you were a toddler at the time. Facebook status updates were funny, people interacted with them and everything you posted. Twitter was the place for quick quips and Instagram was where people showed you what they were eating. Now they’re all different forms of toilets, with left-wing “moderators” moving to silence opinions they don’t like or fear are too effective.
There’s a push to create an alternate online universe, a “safe space” for conservatives and anyone else who holds an opinion out of favor with the fascistic left. While this may sound like a good idea, it’s really just a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It does nothing to address the problem. As I’ve said on this subject many times – no one ever surrendered their way to victory.
Retreating may sound like a viable option, maybe even the best one, but all it does is make the issues it’s supposedly created to address much worse. Yes, the choir needs to be preached to, but if all you do is preach to the choir, and you’re not a reverend, you are not winning anything.
Rather than retreat, a better course of action would be for all the capital being shoveled into these “alternative” platforms being pooled together to take over an existing one.
Lord knows there are very wealthy conservative or libertarian donors out there, or just pro-freedom billionaires with a ton of money (looking at you, Elon Musk) who could do this themselves or partnered with others. Why not?
Twitter would be the obvious choice to target for takeover. Facebook is worth way too much, plus it doesn’t really drive the news conversation the way Twitter does. Instagram is owned by Facebook and is more about narcissism than anything else. TikTok is owned by China and they have no incentive to sell, they’re too busy mining personal information from their idiot users and their phones. And YouTube is owned by Google, which has more money than God and no reason to sell.
If someone, or a group of people, went after Twitter, it’d be getable. You have hundreds of millions of users, none of the “alternatives” come close to that, even with the inflated numbers they put out there. You get a controlling majority and change everything.
Don’t fire all the senior management right off the bat, though you can count on the most radical activists among them quitting. That’s fine, actually desirable, it saves on severance packages.
Those who stay should be given explicit orders that they must implement or be relieved of their jobs. Twitter should be transformed into what it has always claimed to be: a place for open communication where people are free to express themselves however they like. “If it’s legal, it’s fine” is a simple mantra.
The left would go crazy, but they’re already there anyway so who cares? Everyone else go about their business.
The blue checkmark brigade would defect, but only for a while. Just as various conservative “stars” have declared themselves “done with Twitter” only to return without acknowledging their PR stunt (the only person to leave Twitter on their own and keep their word is Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, and he’s much happier for it), these liberals would be back because the know it’s where the audience is. Social media, for all its flaws, is where the egos of narcissists go to be fed.
People with “lifetime bans” for violating Twitter ever-moving goalposts of “community standards” would be reinstated and the block button’s use would be encouraged and yes, that would include the former President of the United States.
Twitter could easily be made into a bastion of free speech – the opposite of almost every college campus and newsroom across the country, where left-wing outrage mobs form…and are ignored. Imagine that. Moreover, rather than taking their ball and going home, conservatives would have the opportunity to make a stand for once. And maybe make a nice profit in the process. Freedom sells, it’s just not for sale anywhere it’s worth buying. This idea would change that.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
Why Most Branded Social Content Is Terrible
I think the fast-food industry gives a misleading picture of the state of branded social media content. Very little of what's posted by brands and seen by people while they scroll is clever or impactful. And much of it is bad, really bad. And it’s not just under-resourced businesses that are stinking it up. I frequently see headsmackingly awful stuff from brands where you’d think they’d have the resources and experience to know better. Especially since branded social media is well into its teens now as a discipline.
You’d think there’d be more refinement of the art by now. More improvement. But, nope. "Dunk in the dark" was nearly a decade ago. And overall content quality doesn’t strike me as any better now than it was in about 2015. So what’s going on here? Why have things stalled? How can we improve them? Those are all important questions, worth addressing. But first, a bit of context.
What’s The Difference Between Good And Bad Branded Social Content?
One piece of good news regarding this topic is that good and bad, while being entirely subjective in realms like art, are not subjective in branded social media. Because branded social media has goals, and often quite specific ones. In the broadstrokes, branded social media content has two main goals, followers and engagement. Some would include reach as a goal, but reach is largely derivative of followers and engagement (unless it’s paid). I’ll start with the latter.
Engagement
Engagement is the name of the game when it comes to branded social content. Good social content gets liked, clicked, and shared. It’s as simple as that. And engagement is not just vanity. More engagement gets you seen by more people.
A well-engaged branded post has three things going for it: elegance, relevance, and value. Elegance is the visual coherence and attractiveness of the post. Relevant content demonstrates that you understand the target audience. Value means the target audience values or at least appreciates the content.
And if you're wondering about the difference between relevance and value, if you say “water is wet” to a group of surfers, that information is relevant to them, but not valuable, while telling them about a brand of board wax that also happens to repel sharks would be both relevant and valuable.
A bad branded social post is missing one or more of these three things.
Followers
With follower growth, the content relationship is not as one-to-one. If you’re an otherwise unknown brand just that’s just launched your social media account, content quality is absolutely essentially to picking up your first followers. If you’re a brand that’s already famous, quality content comprises a smaller chunk of your follower growth, because you’re also getting followers from other sources, such as people who’ve bought your products, or jobseekers.
But even if you are already large, content quality will still be important if you plan to go after a certain demographic. Sure, you can get targeted followers through paid follower-growth ads, but if you want to be sure they’re human, you’ll need some content.
For a more detailed discussion of how engagement and followers fit together, click here.
So Why Does Branded Social Content Suck?
Despite the no-longer-newness of branded social content, few people seem to really understand what sort of content works, or how to present it an attractive way so people will click on it. Why the slow learning curve? I’d say there are six main reasons.
One, as mentioned earlier, if you’re an established brand, content quality doesn’t correlate much with follower growth, and two, there are widespread bots and fraud on the channels. Both of these factors, together, have allowed a lot of mediocrities to look better than they actually are.
In other words, if you’re a Fortune 500 company with a huge social media following, or if you’re a brand with a rockstar CEO, or if your brand is hot for some other reason that is in no way caused by social media, it’s very easy for lame content to look good in terms of metrics. And I think this has elevated a lot of mediocrities into prominent positions.
Three, a lot of social media “best practices” were first cooked up by growth hackers. And basically what they’ve been selling is “what worked for me to build up me and my business will work for your brand.” But this is an apples and oranges comparison. A brand is an abstraction, not a person. The rules are different. Those growth hackers’ businesses are extensions of their own personas. In other words, their businesses are cults, and if your brand doesn’t have a cult leader, you ain't one.
Four, social media is mostly done by marginally-experienced kids, whose only guides for social media content creation are those aforementioned mediocrities and cult leaders, if they have any guides at all. Sure, these kids might understand what’s happening on the channels, but they also might understand precisely nothing else, whether that’s copywriting, marketing, how different types of customers think, or anything else that really matters to the effectiveness of content for your business.
And these kids change jobs and companies frequently, and age out of social as a profession pretty fast (unless they go freelance). And the bosses that they reported to might know nothing about content or social (because they never did it themselves). In other words, there’s very little knowledge transfer to the next generation.
Five is “too many cooks” syndrome. A lot of social posts, especially paid stuff, executive stuff, or stuff published as part of a campaign, has too many layers of approvals. This leads to corporate-speak and excessive buzzwords and hashtags infecting the copy, which will scare off pretty much everyone from engaging with it except the bots.
And six, I think a lot of brands and content people have given up on doing social media content well, because of the widespread badmouthing of organic social that’s been going on for the past several years. People are always saying vanity metrics are shit, or organic social is useless (I don’t trust a lot of these people). And I think this has encouraged a certain laziness when it comes to post quality.
So How Do We Get Better?
Most of the individual problems I just mentioned don’t have direct solutions. But there are things you can do to address all of them in a more general way.
Know Your Purpose
Many companies don’t really know what they’re doing with social, or why they’re doing it. They’re there because everyone else is, and they’ll have targets, but they won’t know why they need them, or what they really mean, or if any value is really delivered by achieving them.
Probably the best way to optimize your social content, and your social resources, is to know why you’re there. There are two buckets that this purpose might fall into, and I’ll call them “active” and “passive.”
If you’re an active company, it means you view social media as a way to really grow your brand and drum up business, or engage with a community, and you want to create content that is social-only, or because you need really content to populate those social channels. And you probably have several KPIs that you’re required to hit, and you’re always looking for ways to do better.
If you’re a passive company, you have no grand designs for social media. You publish posts there, and maybe a few videos, but they mostly link to content not created for social media, but for some other reason (SEO, lead-gen, etc.). In other words, content that would have been created anyway if social media didn’t exist.
You probably have one or two KPIs at the most; a follower growth target and maybe an engagement rate target, but you’re not going to spend extra money to make sure you hit them. And you might have no KPIs at all. Social is just a channel to you, providing as much value as a way to disseminate content to your own employees as it is anything else. You’re there because best practice requires it. And this is a totally legitimate attitude for many companies.
Once you’ve determined whether you are active or passive, we can talk about goals. For active companies, I can’t tell you what your goals should be, there’s too many variables involved. But what I can tell you is, don’t keep asking your social media team to raise your follower growth and engagement rates. Both metrics are too easy to game or otherwise manipulate artificially, often through methods that are undesirable to your business.
Instead, for engagement (unless the rate is shockingly bad), I would tell them to hold the general rate steady, because it’ll naturally decline over time. Worry more about the engagement rate for whatever priority audiences you’re trying to reach, because that’s what matters, and it’s harder to fake.
As to followers, I would use relative percentages of whatever key audiences you want to watch as your goal. Because this is much harder to fake, and if you’re getting more key followers relative to all the jobseekers, employees, and randos who are following you, it means your social team is doing a good job.
If you’re a passive company, I would track the metrics, because you can learn useful things from them, but I would have no specific targets. And the reason why is because whoever would be responsible for them most likely doesn’t have the time, the resources, or the authority to improve them through legitimate means (though they can still resort to illicit ones).
In other words, if you’re a passive company, your part-time social manager probably can’t do anything about your follower growth. And while they can improve the engagement metrics somewhat, a question you must ask yourself is whether or not it’s worth their time. If this person has other duties, it can take a lot of overthinking and effort to improve engagement metrics compared to what's needed to achieve nominal engagement metrics, even if the improvement is fairly small, percentage-wise.
And if you simply must have a KPI, tell your social people to hold the engagement rate, and give them a bonus if they can raise it (because it does matter), but don’t make it an official KPI, as this can lead to overtargeting with content, which you don’t want (because it’ll limit the number of people who see it).
Fewer Approval Layers
Social media content and copywriting is a highly-fluid situation. Things tend to change, quickly. Mistakes get noticed, or better ideas come, in real time. This makes it very hard to work when many signoffs are required each time change is made. So, unless there’s some high-level politics involved in the content, keep the boss out of it. And keep other stakeholders out of it if you can. Most product owners, people in other departments, etc., have no fucking clue what good social content is or how it works, and therefore will not hesitate to ruin it because they don’t know any better.
The best way to achieve this is to create a publishing situation where the channel does not depend on stakeholders (i.e., the channels can stay populated without them). When you have this, the channels will seem like a hot place to be, and so if you want your content to go out, you have to play by the channel owner’s rules. And if your social manager is always begging stakeholders for content, you don’t have this.
Know What You Need Before You Hire
There tend to be four kinds of people who work in branded social media. There are strategists, who are basically data nerds. There are growth hackers (i.e., one-man bands). There are community managers (caretakers who really love the social aspects of social media). And there are postmakers (copywriters or creatives).
If you’re a passive company, you don’t need a strategist or community manager if all you want to do on the channels is post content occasionally. A growth hacker is tempting, but a good one will be expensive, and a full-time one probably won’t provide enough value for it to be worth the cost (passive companies tend to have a ceiling in terms of what they can expect from social media).
Instead, have a postmaker run your accounts. That’s all you need. You don’t need a lot of fancy-pants statistics. A copywriter or creative can read numbers and do the simple math (engagement rate = clicks/reach, etc.) that you need, and they probably don’t need to be on social full-time.
If you’re an active company, things get more complicated. Again, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you what not to do. Only hire a growth hacker if they work alone, or with a designer who also has other responsibilities. Don’t put one on a social team. It’ll create too much conflict and disagreement.
Only having a strategist is fine if an agency is doing the content. Only having a community manager is fine if you don’t care about content (i.e., you're using social mostly for customer engagement). Only having a postmaker is fine for short periods, but it’s not a long-term answer. An active company shouldn’t have their postmaker weighed down with a lot of other duties they don’t like. And you don’t want your postmaker taking orders from an agency or other third-party either – that’ll lead to conflict.
Is Having Good Social Media Content Worth It?
This is a fair question, since creating good social media content is not cheap. I know the general ugliness of organic social numbers, and paid social numbers. But one must bear in mind that we're all spending more time on social media than ever have (though it seems to have plateaued for now).
For many people, Twitter or Facebook is their Internet homepage, and even their search engine, so you want content there if your customers are, because if you're not, your customers and the channel's user base at large, and whatever they're saying (good or bad) about your brand, are dominating the search results on those channels instead of you.
Now as to whether or not social content must be good, or whether it can be lame or just okay, it boils down to a simple question. Do you want it clicked?
If your social media content exists largely as a matter of public record (or internal content distribution across your organization), and your brand will get along just fine if nobody clicks it, then it probably doesn't need to be good. Nominal professionalism will do.
But if you want clicks, by actual humans, it must be good, for the same reason that a TV commercial must be good, because you're interrupting someone's addiction with it. People only like or appreciate advertising when it's of roughly the same quality or better than whatever surrounds it. If TV commercials aren't great, they're annoying. It's the same with branded social content.
3 Best Sites to Buy YouTube Views, Likes, and Subscribers in 2022
Sponsored Content
YouTube currently has a global audience of more than 2 billion active users. Precisely where the best sites to buy YouTube views, likes and subscribers could help you gain an edge. When against this kind of competition, it takes more than quality content alone to get ahead.
To reach the right people on YouTube, you need to convince yourself legit the YT algorithm.
Or, more specifically, show the platform’s search engine that you’re worth promoting. YouTube engagement and exposure begin and end with organic search. The easier your videos are to find, the easier it becomes to grow your audience and channel.
As with all social media platforms, social proof holds the key to making things happen. Likes, views, and subscribers can all provide the real boost your content needs to stand out. Likes, views, and subscribers can also purchase them for a fair price, but which are the best sites to buy YouTube Views, Likes, and Subscribers right now?
Top Sites to Buy Youtube Views, Likes and Subscribers – First Look
Great for Buying Many Views and Subscribers – Media Mister
Good User Reviews and Ratings – GetAFollower
Top Site to grow Your Subscribers – Buy Real Media
Best Sites to Buy YouTube Views, Likes, and Subscribers Reviewed
Narrowing things down to what matters most, the following three sellers top the table in terms of quality, performance, and value for money:
Media Mister
One of the longest-established names in the business, Media Mister, has been around for more than a decade. Their services for YouTube extend to all imaginable types of views, likes, and more. Famous examples include live stream views, Google AdSense views, YouTube premier waiting views, video likes, comment likes, community post likes, and dozens more.
Media Mister is the best place to head for real subscribers with a high retention rate, which guarantees 100% authentic subscribers from active accounts. People can purchase many of their products from specific markets worldwide, including the USA, the UK, Europe, and the Middle East.
Payments are accepted using a long list of popular payment methods, including PayPal, credit cards, and cryptocurrencies. Some of their most popular packages at the time of our visit included the following low-cost options:
1,000 YouTube Views – $13
250 YouTube Subscribers – $46
500 YouTube Video Likes – $77
Media Mister comes highly recommended as perhaps the best site to buy YouTube views, buy YouTube likes, and buy YouTuber subscribers of consistent quality.
GetAFollower
Next up, GetAFollower is the best place to buy YouTube likes, subscribers, and views at rock-bottom prices. Every bit is legit, real, and active as Media Mister’s, with high-quality bundles available to suit all requirements and budgets.
Their 60-day refill guarantee is particularly impressive, covering against any losses during the first two months. GetAFollower offers a huge range of services for YouTube publishers – everything from Livestream views to comment likes and replies to geo-targeted followers from all over the world.
Buy real YouTube Views, Likes, or subscribers from GetAFollower, and stellar customer support comes as standard. The aftercare these guys offer is particularly impressive, addressing any issues or concerns that occur following the delivery process.
Popular packages available right now include the following:
10,000 YouTube Views – $129
50 YouTube Subscribers – $10
50 YouTube Video Likes – $9
Hugely impressive performance in general and well worth checking out.
Buy Real Media
Last up, a notable mention has to go the way of Buy Real Media. Definitely, the best place to buy YouTube subscribers with a safe (i.e., slow) delivery speed and the guarantee of a high retention rate – if not permanent subscribers for your channel.
They also make it easy and affordable to buy legit YouTube views and buy real YouTube likes from real people. Everything on offer is as cheap as it gets, with the same total quality and authenticity guaranteed across the board.
Popular products and packages available at Buy Real Media include the following:
5,000 YouTube Views – $65
250 YouTube Subscribers – $46
500 YouTube Video Likes – $77
It is more or less unbeatable in terms of value for money, from a seller with a track record that speaks for itself.
FAQs on Buying YouTube Views, Likes, and Subscribers
Still wondering whether buying YouTube views, likes, and subscribers is right for you?
Check out the briefly summarised FAQs below for the information and insights you need:
Can I Buy Subscribers on YouTube? The same also applies when looking to buy subscribers for your YouTube channel. If each and every subscriber you buy is 100% authentic, they’re 100% safe and effective. Things only become sketchy when you attempt to cheat the system with synthetic followers from spam accounts.
Be mindful of the fact that the YouTube algorithm is more than capable of spotting fake Subscribers. The vast majority of YouTube users – fake accounts with no evidence of activity aren’t difficult to detect. It’s therefore essential to avoid fake subscribers at all costs, as they could do a number on your credibility and reputation.
Is It Illegal to Buy YouTube Views? Not at all – buying 100% authentic YouTube views is 100% legal. There are no laws, rules, or regulations that prohibit the purchase of views on the condition that they are authentic.
By contrast, fake views from spam accounts are strictly prohibited by YouTube and could result in account suspension.
Where Can I Buy Real YouTube Views?Each of the three social media growth companies listed above will offer 100% authentic services. This means that each and every product is sourced exclusively from a real person with an active and authentic account.
Views, likes, and followers that qualify as ‘real’ are those that are identical to those you would earn organically. The only difference being that in this instance, you’re paying for them to be added to your content and your channel.
Can YouTube Detect Fake Views? Yes, which is precisely why fake social proof should be avoided at all costs. The truth is, you don’t need to be a genius to trace the origins of fake views, likes, and so on. It’s something YouTube is engineered to do automatically so that you won’t get away with it.
Fake social proof delivered via spam accounts is automatically detected and removed. After which, action may be taken against those responsible for it (and those using it). Something that could see you falling out of favor with the YouTube algorithm or having your account suspended indefinitely.
How Can I Monetize My YouTube Channel Faster?The quickest and easiest way to make money on YouTube is to get yourself on board with the YouTube Partner Program. To do so, you will need to have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and have generated at least 4,000 watch time hours within the past 12 months.
After which, it’s perfectly possible to begin generating anything from $2.00 to more than $5.00 for every 1k views you stack up. Purchasing subscribers and watch time hours is the obvious approach to getting the job done faster. But if you plan on buying your way into the YouTube Partner Program this way, you need to be extremely careful when it comes to the quality and authenticity of the products you buy.
How to Buy YouTube Views, Likes, and Subscribers? The logistics involved in buying YouTube views, likes, and subscribers really couldn’t be simpler:
Find a top-rated service provider you can trust
Choose your preferred product or package
Enter the URL of the channel or post you want to promote
Complete the secure payment process
Wait for your products to be delivered
That’s really all there is to it, with the option of enlisting the seller’s customer support team if unsure how to proceed. Delivery should always take place through a drip-feed system – never the kind of instant delivery that sets alarm bells ringing at YouTube.
Can I Get Free YouTube Views Online?Last up, getting free views for your YouTube videos is not a realistic option. Free views that come organically from your own friends and followers are fine, but free views are not handed out online.
Any ‘free’ views you come across online are guaranteed to be fake. Nobody gives away premium services like these for free, which take time and effort to deliver.
Remember that when something seems too good to be true, at almost certainly is. Steer clear of free views, as there’s really no such thing.
Conclusion
Shopping around for the best sites to buy YouTube views, likes and subscribers means focusing on what matters most:
Product quality and authenticity
A reasonable retention warranty
Quality customer support
A full money-back guarantee
Established track-record and reputation
Each of the three sellers outlined above comes highly recommended, having fulfilled these five requirements. But with more than 10,000 satisfied customers to date and a track record spanning a decade, Media Mister is the top pick of the three right now.
The news and editorial staff of the Bay Area News Group had no role in this post’s preparation.
Click here more details
Effective Marketing Tool
https://bit.ly/3HyVeCj