Finding fame, and sometimes fortune, in social media

Those who have become 'internet-famous' offer insights to the use of Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr for self-promotion.

Social media has made it easier than ever to catapult from obscurity to prominence. In recent years, the web has blossomed into a more egalitarian version of American Idol, where nobodies compete for attention alongside somebodies.
Today, a teenager posting webcam videos to YouTube can get a movie deal. (For example, Fred: The Movie.)
A 30-something posting one-liners on Twitter can land a TV show on CBS: $#*! My Dad Says. Bloggers creating internet memes are being offered book deals at a dizzying pace.

However, alongside breakout web celebs — not to mention actual celebrities with huge online followings such as Rihanna and Katy Perry — there's a new class of microstars who are highly popular and viral, but have no aspirations of going to Hollywood.

 How they became internet-famous — and made comfortable incomes — offers insights to those who are unsure of how to use Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr to promote themselves or their projects.

The mobile phone quipster

Tattoo photos and stories posted by Kimber Turner on Tumblr.

Like many teenagers, Joey Mueller, 19, spends much of his time texting on his iPhone. But when he taps out a 140-character message and presses send, he's talking to nearly 400,000 people.
Mueller created his Twitter account, @itisjoey, in 2010 as he was travelling to compete at the World Horseshoe Tournament in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He figured using Twitter to comment from a big event might help him draw an audience.
"I didn't get any followers or anything," he recalls. "I guess it wasn't interesting."

Joey Mueller, aka @itisjoey. Photo: Twitter

Now a sophomore majoring in graphic design at the University of Minnesota, he decided to avoid personal messages and focus on observational humour.
Mueller says his personal Tumblr website already had 75,000 followers. He added a link to his Twitter account. Immediately, his follower count jumped. Then a curious thing happened: the numbers kept climbing. In 2012, he hit 440,000.
I'm not sure why," he says. "Sometimes I think I got lucky."
Mueller says he has never purchased followers. He says that posting from noon to 6pm, when people typically spend more time online, helps. He also routinely adopts popular hashtags, especially political ones, which he says helped get him retweeted by organisations including Move On.
The fame hasn't gone to his head, he says, or at least his parents keep him down-to-earth. "They're like, 'You know, you're not really famous. Stay in school."'

The tattoo chronicles
Kimber Turner was bored. In the spring of 2008, when she was a 22-year-old journalism major at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Turner completed all of her courses online. Which is to say, she spent a lot of time on her laptop.
Turner started killing time online by collecting found images of tattoos borrowed mostly from body modification websites. She decided to post the photos on a Tumblr account she hastily titled with an obscenity common among youthful creators of Tumblrs — personalised web pages where ephemera is deposited. In a few months, Turner had 300 followers. Other Tumblr users began emailing pictures and explanations of their own tattoos to her.
"Everybody wanted their story out there," Turner says. "People just really liked how interactive it was."
She said in 2008 she received 200 submissions a day. Four years later, she gets 350 a day. Images are contributed by fans all over the globe.
Today, Turner has more than 695,000 followers. For comparison, when Texts from Hillary went viral on Tumblr earlier this year, it attracted 45,000 followers in a week.
Her secret? Volume. She publishes about 50 photos a day, one every 30 minutes, to keep fans coming back. She also follows Tumblr's other popular users
"There's so many people on Tumblr who post all sorts of random things," Turner says. "Having a focus really lets people connect, and it's a great way to stand out."
Although she took various odd jobs after graduating in 2011, including one as a receptionist for a seamstress, ads on the site earn her $60,000 annually, she says.
"When I realised it could very well just be a full-time job, I nearly had a heart attack," she says. "Now I make more than my parents."

The hyperlocal radio DJ
Jaime Black, 29, says he has been a "huge radio nerd" since he was 15. He cut his teeth at an alternative rock station, Q101 in Chicago, where he graduated from an internship to a weekend producing job.
On the side, in 2005, he began podcasts about Chicago's underground music scene. Called Dynasty Podcasts, the episodes — 10 to 15-minute interviews Black records with local artists and club owners — were made available as MP3s on his website. The response was modest.
Five years later, when he created a SoundCloud account, he saw just how broad his reach could grow. He has amassed more than 43,000 followers on the audio-sharing website, which has been called the "YouTube of audio".
"I was very fortunate to get there early," Black says of SoundCloud, which claims to have 20 million users. "I might have beat some of the larger radio stations to SoundCloud. I didn't see that much non-music content when I started."
Today, Black posts two to 11 shows a week, which he records with a hand-held Olympus digital recorder. His philosophy is, "make it easy for people to discover the content and know right away what it is".
"I'm sharing it on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest," he says. "I don't just post things without putting some effort into the presentation. All the imaging is uniform. All the metadata is uniform."
In 2011, Black started running local event promotions, just like a radio station. He turned Dynasty Podcasts into a full-time job and said he earned $500 for one hour of work.
"A few years ago it was like, 'Oh, how cute, you have a pretend radio show,' " Black says. "And now, we just did a promotion with Supercuts."

The metropolitan paparazzo
Whenever a new digital service is started, there is a race to claim user names. In January 2011, Liz Eswein, then a senior at New York University, claimed one of the better Instagram user names: @newyorkcity.
"People have said, 'Oh, I thought the city of New York was running it.' " Eswein laughs. "It's like, nope, it's just me."
It is difficult to tell that the feed is not maintained by someone in the mayor's office. Eswein, 23, posts only photos taken in and around the city. Using her iPhone 4S, she sticks to snapshots of familiar landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Central Park, and pictures taken at local events such as the US Open and New York Fashion Week. One of Eswein's recent snapshots of the Plaza Hotel earned 13,330 likes.
She says she often sees comments from users across the United States and as distant as Australia, South America and Greece.
"Instagram is a great way to see different parts of the world through your phone," she says, "Everyone has a special place in their heart for New York City."
Soon after starting the account, Eswein began attending local Instawalks, where users gather to socialise and take photos. The gatherings publicised her account among the app's power users.
By April 2012, @newyorkcity had 195,000 followers. It jumped to 422,000 after the release of an Instagram app for Android phones. (For some perspective, Lady Gaga's account currently has about 440,000 followers.)
In March, Eswein founded a business with two Instagram users. They now consult with brands, including Evian and Samsung, that are looking to engage users on Instagram.
Does she also keep a personal account on Instagram? "Yeah, but I don't use it at all," she said.

Facebook's and Twitter's Dirty Little Secret

Information recently revealed from a variety of sources suggests that a huge percentage of users on social sites like Facebookand Twitter aren’t actually human.Millions upon millions of
social accounts are either created by “bots” or have been created for some other
purpose than social networking.And I believe the problem is much worse than is being reported.
The Trouble With Facebook and Twitter
In a company filing earlier this month, Facebook reported that 83 million Facebook accounts are fake users. A social media management company called Status People created an online tool called Fakers,
which estimates the relative percentages of anyone’s Twitter following that’s fake, inactive and good.
For example, Twitter’s number-one user, Lady Gaga, supposedly has about 30 million followers. But Fakers says 71% of those little monsters are either fake or inactive. In reality, Twitter’s
number-one user has fewer than 9 million actual followers, if Fakers is accurate.
Personally, I doubt the real number of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts are actually that low. The reason is that in neither case are the methodologies used to reach these numbers transparent. And I think it’s nearly impossible to detect a well-managed fake account.
I’m certain that I could create a fake Facebook or Twitter account, visit it weekly for ten minutes of activity, and no bot or machine or survey could ever determine that it’s a fake account.
In former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s lingo, detection software can identify only the “known unknowns” and is clueless and powerless in the face of the “unknown unknowns.”
I think the percentages listed above are minimums, and that actual percentages of fake accounts is much higher.

The Fake User Industrial Complex
Where do fake user accounts come from? They come from many sources and serve many purposes. Here are some of the major sources for fake user accounts.

Fake user market: At least 58 companies currently appear online to sell fake users. Pay one of these services less than $20, and your Twitter following will go up by 1,000 users in 24 hours. A million new fake followers will cost you more than $1,300 and take a few days. You can also buy followers for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others.

Spammers: People hoping to sell something also create fake user accounts in large numbers.

Trolls: Most online trolls have multiple fake accounts, which they use to mess with people.

Astroturfers: Anyone who wants to fake a grass-roots
campaign of some kind can higher low-cost workers to create very large numbers
of fake accounts, which they can then use to leave opinion comments, creating
the illusion that an idea is more popular than it appears. Many politicians in the US and
in other democracies are almost certainly doing this, too. For example, Barracuda Labs reported
that within a period of 24 hours during the month of June, the Twitter followers
of presidential candidate Mitt Romney grew by 116,992. Here’s the kicker: One
quarter of those “users” had joined Twitter within the prior four days.

Regular people with multiple accounts: Some “fake” accounts are merely created for a variety of purposes. I personally have created about a dozen Twitter accounts over the years for various projects. I never closed any of them.

Abandoned accounts: A huge number of social media
accounts are created, then abandoned. They’re not “fake” users, but nobody’s
home. A user is only a user if he uses.

Developers: Developers often create multiple fake
social media accounts so they can test an app or some other project.

Criminals: Identity thieves, drug dealers, terrorists -- you name it. It’s not very smart to coordinate or execute various law-breaking activities from a real social media account. It’s easy enough to just create a new fake one, and use that from a public terminal.

Social Network Founders: Reddit founder Steve Huffman admitted in an online computer science class that Reddit was launched with a large number of fake users. The two founders wrote a capability available only to them
whereby adding a user name automatically registered that username as a real
user. For the first few months, Reddit appeared to have hundreds or thousands of users, but they were mostly just the two founders. This is probably pretty common, especially for apps that interface with social networks (as many now do).

The Fake 'Like' Industry
BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones tested the
value to businesses of Facebook advertising and “Likes.” He created a fake company called VirtualBagel, which offered a bogus service: downloadable electronic bagels.
He bought $60 worth of Facebook advertising, and got 3,000 “Likes.”
Upon closer inspection, however, he found that many of the “Likes” were made by fake accounts, and by serial “Likers” -- for example, one fake account in Egypt that had also “Liked” 3,000 other brands.
He also noticed a wildly disproportionate number of “Likes” coming from certain countries -- Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines. A bioscience consulting company called Comprendia discovered something similar. Some 54% of “Likes” for their a company came from India,
Mexico, Indonesia, and Portugal, which collectively represent only 15% of
Facebook users. They estimate that about 40% of the Facebook “Likes” they got
were from fake accounts. Facebook recently announced
a new initiative to automatically remove fake “Likes,” which it says come from
“malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk likes.”
But this program appears to me to be more of a PR stunt than an effective elimination of fake “Likes.” For starters, Facebook estimates that “on average, less than 1% of Likes on any
given Page will be removed.” However, the actual percentage of fake “Likes” is
surely much higher, possibly as high as 40%, as Comprendia estimates.

The Fake User Problem
I believe the fake social user
account problem is going to become a far bigger challenge than most people believe.
It’s an arms race, comparable to the contest between email spammers and spam filter companies. As companies find new ways to detect and close fake accounts, the fakers will find new ways
to open undetectable ones.Fake accounts will increasingly
sway public opinion, spam social streams with sophisticated and hard-to-detect
soft pitches for products and services, socially engineer people for criminal
purposes and much more. The fake social user account
problem will be devastating for Facebook and Twitter, which will have to work
hard to convince advertisers that users and “Likes” and tweets are living,
breathing human beings, and not bots or scammers.

Social media could turn athlete earnings gold

Olympic athletes are returning home from the London Games, hoping to extend their peak period for endorsement earnings through their increased popularity on social media.Many athletes saw their earnings potential skyrocket during the Games, even existing household names such as Michael Phelps, the US swimmer crowned as the most winning Olympian of all time, and Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world.The athletes, who both are endorsed by a lineup of global brands, could earn about $50m a year in endorsement deals should they be able to extend their time in the spotlight beyond the halo of the Games, according to SponsorHub, a company that brokers endorsement deals.An athlete’s following on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites has quickly become key in determining this.“Brands always ask how many followers an athlete has,” said Ricky Simms, director at Pace Sports Management who is Bolt’s worldwide agent. “For many companies, this is the way they want to reach their target customers.”Olympic athletes traditionally had a short time frame to capitalise on their performance in the Games because they quickly fade from the public eye, according to marketing executives. But social media has allowed the athletes to extend relationships with fans by sharing messages, photos and videos. Sponsorship now typically involve some social media promotion through an athlete’s Twitter feed or Facebook page. Before the Games, for instance, Bolt posted messages about his sponsors, such as a picture of a refrigerator filled with bottles of the orange Gatorade sports drink Athletes were not permitted to mention sponsors on social media without a special waiver until a period surrounding the Games, which ends on Wednesday. Advertisers that endorsed Olympians but were not official Olympic sponsors also were barred from promoting that connection during the period surrounding the Games. Marketers that endorse Olympic athletes are expected to release a flurry of ads to congratulate athletes when that blackout period ends. Athletes also are expected to hit social media, thanking their sponsors. Bolt is one of the most followed Olympians with more than 8m Facebook fans and 1.6m Twitter followers. Before the games, Bolt had about 620,000 Twitter followers. Bolt’s existing sponsors include Visa, Puma and Gatorade but he is looking to extend his brand further. Mr Simms said Bolt had recently released a new mobile game and is in discussions about using his signature celebratory pose on products ranging from luxury brands to toiletry items and Jamaican-inspired food products.However, some athletes who experienced a quick leap to fame during the Games are likely to have a harder time translating that into new sponsorship deals. Gabby Douglas, the US gold medal winning gymnast, for instance, saw her Twitter followers spike to more than 654,000 from 29,000 before the Games. While she now ranks among the most sponsorable athletes, her appeal to marketers is likely to drop relatively quickly after the Games because of the short tenure of most gymnasts and a lack of interest in gymnastics throughout the rest of the year, industry executives said.Marketers that endorsed her before the games, such as Procter & Gamble, are likely to see the most benefit.“There is no arguing that Gabby’s value as an endorser is exponentially more valuable now than it was when they signed her,” said Kevin Adler, founder of Engage Marketing, a Chicago sports and entertainment marketing company. “If I am a creative and smart athlete agent, I would include bonus clauses that trigger financial incentives if social media audiences grow.”

Google Plus Tips- 13 Ways to Get Increased Google Plus Followers

Google plus has entered in the social media as a competition to different social networking sites. It has given direct competition to Facebook which is a social media giant. Many analysts are predicting that in coming months Google Plus will gain more popularity than Facebook. It has given a nice opportunity to internet users and online marketers to increase their presence.

They should not wait for the declaration of winner and start building their presence as Google Plus circles, friends and followers. Here we have brought a complete list for you with the help of which you can easily get increased followers on Google Plus.

Ways to increase followers on Google Plus
1. Build Google Plus Circle: First thing you need to do is to create a Google Plus Circle. It includes the people with whom you want to interact. Google Plus has a feature of grouping your circle on the basis of your priorities as friends, following, acquaintances, family, colleagues, customers etc. You can share your update with any particular circle or with particular people. Like some updates can be for your business purpose that you would like to share with your customers while others you would like to share with public.

2. Google Plus Page: Google Plus also gives you a feature of creating profile and business page where you can create separate profile and business page like Facebook. Business pages are good way of letting people know about your website, blog and business. You should immediately set up one. You can also add these Google plus Business pages into your Google Plus circles. Contact Sales Success Consulting, a leading Web Design Boston Agency for professional SMO services.

3. Ask Friends to add you Circle: As Google plus is still at starting stage, many people are still unaware of this. In order to make circles you can invite your friends to join you and add you in their Google+ circle. You can also ask your friends who are using other social media networks to add you to their G+ circles. You can also invite your Gmail contacts to join you on Google plus.

4. Share Interesting Stories on Google Plus: Make your Google plus account more interactive and share interesting stories on that. It allows you to share links, videos, images and other content. So you have option to share anything which you find interesting.
You can share your stories with people of your choice and can also mention them by using @ as you do on Facebook to tag people.

5. Locate More People: You can find out more and more people on your Google plus account. You just need to login in your account, clink on view all link option and then click on find people. This will show you options of people either who have same interest like you or who are friends of your friends. You may not even know them personally. So it's your choice who you want to add from the suggested list. You can also import contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts by uploading your address book.

6. Send Your Updates through Email: There are chances that some of your friends are not logged into Google plus accounts or not using it and they may miss your latest updates and posts on Google plus. To cope up with this situation you have an option to send updates to your friends through email, a special feature offered by Google+. Google Plus is the only social media network providing you this facility of sharing your updates via Email.

7. Opt for Google Plus Mobile Version: Google plus has its own application using which users can use their mobile to get engaged with their community members and post new status updates as you do for other social media websites.

8. Follow Back Your Followers: You will get a notification from Google plus whenever someone adds you. You should also follow them back to give them a favor.
9. Add Google Plus Buttons to
Your Website: Don't forget to add Google Plus button on your site and blog at important positions. This will give you double benefits. First it will motivate your website readers to click on the plus button and second it will also help in enhancing Google Plus followers.

10. Comment on other's Updates: Make the conversation more interesting by commenting on the latest updates on Google plus. In this way you can also contact lots of new bloggers and targeted audience from your niche.

11. Interesting Stories from Other Users: Apart from commenting on other's updates, you can also click on plus one button to like stories and updates. Slowly and gradually it will benefit you by the returned favor of the people in the form of clicks on plus one button on your stories and the invitation to join their circles.

12. Make Your Google Plus Content Public: Be found by more people and that you can do by making your profile visible to public as done on LinkedIn account. Share your stories and content with public but it should be related to business only. Avoid sharing your personal stuff there.

13. Upload a High Resolution Pictures: If you have collection of nice pictures you can share it on you Google Plus profile. Always upload high resolution pictures to improve the look of your photos.

How to Make Fast Money with Social Media

We can't deny the value social media can create for businesses. Big or small, every business touches a wider network of customers and returns big sales with help from social networking sites, forums, blogs, and websites among others. So, if you haven't joined the bandwagon yet, it's time to use social media to earn easy money just like every other business today. Trust us, it's one of the best decisions you'll ever make, especially when you see fast easy money coming in.

Social media is very easy to set up and utilize. You only need an Internet connection and an unfailing interest to be online for most part of the day and voila- fast easy money is in the bag in no time. If you are not familiar with the steps yet, here are some things you can keep in mind.

Sign up! Whatever social media is available out there, take your chance and sign up for them. For bigger networks like Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, you'll reach different kinds of target customers and chances are, you'll get a huge concentration of your own target market from these sites. Don't overlook smaller but equally essentials sites like Linkedlin and other forums and websites.

Make the job easier for you. Social media marketing demands a lot of your time so if you have other things to accomplish, better make the job simpler for you by using online tools that allow multiple postings and tracking of your posts. Examples of such tools are SproutSocial and HootSuite. You can also outsource the task or hire a social media marketer.

Content is essential. Don't just start adding friends or networks without any content to give them reason to follow or visit you. So, set up an account and put quality content first. This will draw possible customers in, especially when they find your content useful to them. Most importantly, make sure to post only relevant content because otherwise it would be spamming and could hurt your reputation badly, even before you could begin marketing.

Find followers. When good content is up and running on your account, it is time to find followers. Start with family and friends first. Then, move outwards with other relative groups or individuals. From them, other people will know about your business. You can also pay to have an ad out for you on Facebook, Google, and others.

Be sincere with your followers. Avoid spam and other impersonal messages and comments on your friends or followers' accounts. But by giving time to read and comment on what they have to say, you develop a personal relationship with them. And when you're in good terms with them, they won't hesitate to get the word out about who you are and what you can do for their other friends.

Earn easy money with social media. It's one of the most accessible ways to easy fast money. Simply follow the tips above and you'll see your business grow in amazing ways.