In this episode, Ananya Bhargava interviews Crystal Alvarez, an instructor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU. Focusing on the role of authenticity in social media, the discussion explores the distinction between organic and paid content, the psychology of social proof and reciprocity in building brand loyalty, and the impact of social media on consumer decisions.
Transcript
[Intro Music]
Ananya Bhargava: Building an authentic presence on social media is no longer optional, it’s vital for businesses aiming to foster meaningful connections with their audiences. In an era where consumers value transparency and relatability, leveraging social media authentically can make or break a brand’s reputation and impact. I’m joined today by Crystal Alvarez, an instructor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who brings her expertise in audience engagement, social media strategy, and content creation to the discussion.
In this episode, we’ll break down the difference between organic and paid social media content, understand digital audiences, and explore how social proof and reciprocity drive brand loyalty. We’ll also examine the impact of social media on consumer decisions and share tips for consumers on managing their media diet in an age of endless content.
Crystal Alvarez: So my name is Crystal Alvarez, and I’m an instructor here at the Cronkite School. I teach in the digital audience series, kind of the foundations of digital audience strategy and how to grow an audience or a brand, which is often through the realm of social media, and then also teaching in the Capstone side of that so kind of at a higher level, how we can use organic and paid efforts on social media to grow a brand or an account to hit client goals.
Bhargava: That sounds amazing and like so much fun. So you mentioned organic and paid media. Could you define what those are for our audience?
Alvarez: With social media specifically, when it comes to organic content, that’s going to be content that doesn’t have any specific dollars behind it in the platform. So in theory, right, everything costs money, because the person who’s creating the content, they probably need to be paid, unless they’re a volunteer to create the content, but if you’re sending that piece of content – Let’s say I create a post for Instagram, and I design a little graphic, and then I post it on the brand’s account or on my account, and there’s no other money attached to it, and that just goes out into the world and it gets seen by who it’s served to. Then that’s a piece of organic content. Now, a paid piece of content is going to be a piece of content that has advertising dollars related to it. So the word “ad” is very broad, but when you’re talking about a social media ad, it’s a piece of content that is paid. So that means that on the back end, often on a platform, let’s say Meta, where you want to run an ad on Facebook or Instagram, you’d have to go into their ads manager platform and say, “This is the audience that I want to target.” So maybe we want to target 18 to 25 year olds in Phoenix, Arizona who like fast food. Then we would set a certain campaign goal, we’d set a budget, and then we would tell Meta, this is who we want to target, or we’d tell them we want you to use your algorithm to pick an audience that may be relevant. And once you do that, and you actually launch the ad, it has to go through approvals and things like that, because there are things that you can’t create an advertisement for or there’s things that are restricted. But once you put your credit card information in, assign the budget, and then actually send that, then they’ll use their advertising algorithms to send those out, and that will make it a paid ad. Once it shows up on someone’s screen and it says sponsored, oftentimes you can click on those ads. So a post and a social media that is organic, it’s just going to kind of have, usually your image and your caption, and that’s it, or it’s a video and a caption, whereas a paid ad often will have either your video, your image, but typically it is clickable, because you want to actually get people to do an action like “click here,” “go to the website,” “buy,” maybe “sign up,” “download.” The difference is whether you’re paying for it or not to actually try to be delivered to someone.
Bhargava: So you sort of mentioned that focus on the digital audience and making sure that your marketing mix is very tailored towards them specifically. So what do you think is something important about the digital audience that future marketers should understand?
Alvarez: The biggest thing is that platforms will change. So we’ve seen it even just the past 10 years, we’ve gone from, like, a MySpace to a Tiktok to whatever’s next. We don’t know yet. We can kind of forecast what’s next, but that digital audience, there’s theories on audience behavior. Like the platforms can change, but often, human behavior doesn’t. So the biggest thing is trying to understand your digital audience, because if you can understand that, then you can adapt faster than what you need to. And faster than your competition, right, as a business. So a big part of business is being ahead of your competition, or kind of finding the competitive edge or gap in a marketplace. A big one, for example, is the theory of reciprocity. So if a business is engaging with their audience, and the audience feels that, “Hey, this is someone that cares about me and they’re looking out for me and they’re taking the time to respond to me.” If you think back just a few years ago, people used to think it was the coolest thing ever when a brand would just respond to them. Like, now it’s changed a little bit more because there’s more of like partnerships and things like that. But before then, you were a celebrity, if a brand mentioned your name or reposted your comment or something like that. So people are kind of fed by the reciprocity of what you can receive from, like feeling like you are in like a friendship, right? If, let’s say you play intramural soccer and I’m your friend and I come out every week to support you, or I cheer for you, then you feel good and you’re like, “Okay, Crystal cheers for me. So when she has something going on, I’m going to cheer for her.” And that is often seen with brands and consumers and businesses and consumers. When consumers give coupons and or they have loyalty programs.
The biggest thing is digital audiences, they can evolve, and platforms can evolve. But there’s things that will not change, and it’s that ability to build a relationship with them, and ultimately, you want to get them to a loyalty stage, and at the peak of that, you want them to be advocating for your brand. You want them to be die-hard consumers of your brand, like almost a walking brand ambassador for you. And you do that through these different theories when it comes to reciprocity, or giving them kind of special perks, or just listening to them. All of these things help businesses stay ahead, because if you understand that digital audience, and you won’t always understand them perfectly, but if you have a good idea and you’re continuing to create things that resonate, then that’s going to put you in the best position to be successful, because having that open door with them allows you to message to them, and ultimately allows you to tell them, “Hey, I want you to take X, Y and Z action.” And often that action is tied to the bigger business objective. Whether that be creating more sales or having them sign up for a service or increasing donations, or maybe having them not do something. Those are all things that they will not pay attention to or even care about you, unless they feel like you’re directly speaking to them on an individual basis.
When someone receives an ad, when someone is on social media, often they’re not in an audience where everyone else is looking at them on their shoulder as they’re scrolling. When you receive an ad, maybe you’re laying on the couch and you’re like, “Oh, that’s cool. An ad for these cool, new Nike sneakers.” But unless those people did that research to understand me as their audience member, for example, I play soccer. So if they understood that from my end of my demographics and of my psychographics, which are more like my habits and who I am and what I like, if they did their job right, then that ad is going to feel like it’s speaking directly to me, and then what am I going to do? I’m going to be like, “Wow, like, this is so cool.” I’m probably going to click, and then I’m already kind of more into their funnel of what I’m going to do next. Maybe I become a customer. Maybe then I become more loyal as I keep kind of engaging with the brand. But that’s why understanding your digital audience is like the key to how to be the most successful, which is no easy task, right? But that’s my two cents on one of the most important pieces.
Bhargava: I really like how you phrase the platforms change, but the consumer behavior doesn’t. But to take a slightly different angle, what would you say are the ways that social media has affected consumer buying decisions?
Alvarez: I mean, social media is huge in buying decisions, because there’s a lot of schools of thought right on how a customer goes from having no idea who you are to becoming this loyal advocate. And sometimes it can be seen in the form of a marketing funnel. So some people will have like a funnel, which is essentially an inverted pyramid. So if you’re starting at the top, then people are becoming aware of your brand. First, they have no idea who you are, then they become aware, and then they’re slowly kind of moving down into your funnel. And there’s tons of people at the top, because tons of people might not know who you are, but then as they’re coming down, down this funnel is they’re starting to engage with your brand, maybe become aware, become interested, consider your brand. Then eventually they hit what’s called a conversion, or a conversion point, and that might be making that purchase. Right now, a big piece of those funnel journeys or customer journeys is social proof. And we see it all the time when it comes to, “I got influenced to buy this on TikTok shop,” or an influencer was talking about this product, and you immediately buy it. Because, again, there’s like that human connection of that word of mouth that used to happen offline, but now it’s happening online, and it happens in huge capacities. And like tons of people will be talking about one thing, and it can quickly kind of erupt.
Social proof is one of the best things that you can use to sell any type of product. And again, if you can get someone to be in that advocacy stage for you, where they’re a walking brand ambassador, what does that mean? That means that they are going to be speaking so highly of your brand that, just by them in kind of who they are as a person and as a part of their habits and their identity, they’re essentially saying, “I love Nike so much. I only wear Nike. These are the best running shoes ever.” And they’re doing that without you paying them a single dime. So, yeah, social proof will often sell out products in 24 hours. But oftentimes on social media, specifically, I had talked about that curve, which would be like Diffusion of Innovations theory, which is essentially that idea that something is starting to become innovative and at the start there’s like, only a tiny bit of people that are adopting it, and those are going to be like your early adopters. And then as more people start to adopt, it kind of becomes into this curve. And then more and more people are starting to adopt. But eventually, it hits a peak where now a bunch of people are adopting it, and then it starts to go back down again. So with social media specifically, let’s say you’re a business and you notice a trend. First of all, again, you have to go back and think about your audience. Is this trend even relevant? Does it fit into how you want to present yourself, and how can you present it in a creative way? Because if you’re an early adopter of finding this trend, and you hop onto this curve that’s going to start, or before this curve begins, then you’re in a great positioning, because people see the content, they go, “Ah, that’s kind of funny. I’ve seen a few of these,” or, “Oh, I’m glad they did this, that’s funny,” or “This is creative.” It’s very trendy, and it’s similar to the idea of public relations when you’re essentially taking the news and seeing what’s trending, almost like in a news-jacking scenario.
But if you waited too long, then what happens when you create a piece of content, maybe it’s trendy, and you’re like, “Yes, we’re cool now.” We jumped on to this trend, right? This bandwagon, but then people watch it and they’re like, “That’s old, like we already saw that, we’ve already seen that 100 other times in the feed.” So then you’re in a poor position because you were not an early adopter of innovation or of a trend. So that is a really important thing that we see often right now in social media, is that idea of future forecasting, and that’s really important in business in general. Just being able to write, stay ahead and kind of think what’s next, and that’s exactly what business people can translate into social media. They can really try to see what might be next and what might we test next?
Another big thing is just having one main message, and often, one main action you want people to do. I always advise specifically to my students or even a client: oftentimes if you think about speaking to one person and again, envisioning that person receiving that piece of content by themselves on their phone, then you write a lot differently to them then when you’re writing and you’re imagining like, 100 people who might be in your target audience. Because then we start to, like, almost pretend we’re on a stage, and we’re like, “Good afternoon,” or “Hello everyone.” And the people that are seeing that can see right through it. So then they think that your business is not in the know. So you have to be able to figure out “How can I speak directly to them?” Whether you’re creating a hook, or whether you’re just talking about one main message when you’re speaking to someone side by side, just like we’re speaking right now, often, if I’m explaining something to you, I’m going to explain it to you, I’m going to talk about one thing. Now, if I go off topic and talk about 10 things, that’s different, but in a piece of content, you can see that right away. So you have to make sure that you’re organized, and again, that you’re just taking into consideration what your audience likes from a demographics and a psychographics point of view. If your audience is spontaneous, maybe they don’t mind if you kind of post random things here and there. Maybe they like that, and they think it makes you more relatable. But if your audience is a bit more serious, maybe they do want to just know when your next event is happening, and that’s all they want. And they don’t want you to keep messaging every day. They don’t care. But as long as you’re meeting your business objectives with kind of balancing your strategy, then you are in a good place.
Bhargava: Yeah, that makes sense. I just would love to hear anything else we haven’t covered, more focused on social media and any trends you’ve noticed or find fascinating in the social media marketing space.
Alvarez: I would say the biggest thing that I think has been really fun to watch when it comes to businesses and how they use social media is that idea of social media has really allowed businesses to pull back the curtain into the way that they do things. So I think that people are really fascinated by, not only processes of what the company’s doing behind the scenes. People love seeing something go from a piece of fabric to a brand new design, and I think now companies are able to showcase that. But I think more importantly, people are now really interested in seeing the people behind the organizations. And often a lot of companies, what they’re doing is, in the best case scenario, they’re creating a positive environment in their organization where people really do believe in the values of that company. And what does that mean? That creates organic opportunities for their employees to essentially also become brand ambassadors. There is kind of a big rise right now in the content creator economy, where, like even people that have really small accounts, they’re creating content, and it’s very accessible for people to create content. So now a lot of people are kind of in that space where anyone can become a creator. So you want to make sure that you’re leveraging those creators in the way that your brand is operating, whether that be through your employees, or just in the way that you’re playing in the social media landscape. You want to make sure that if someone has popped up out there that loves your brand, that you want to be the first person to try to find them and continue to build an organic relationship with them, because in many cases, that person may just be so delighted that you are paying attention to them, that they’ll continue to create content that is beneficial for both of you. Because if they love your brand, if you create that reciprocity with someone who’s already loyal and wants to advocate for you, and you can find them online, then that’s like the best place that you can be in. And then two like, there’s just a lot of evolving that happens on social media for brands and for platforms, because having like a digital footprint in today’s world is really critical.
Bhargava: I know we’ve talked a lot about the business side, but do you have any advice for consumers navigating being constantly exposed to ads as soon as they open any social media app? Whether that’s directly, they can identify it as an ad or indirect influence?
Alvarez: The first thing that consumers can do is just make sure that they really are aware of their “media diet,” is what we could call it. At the end of the day, there are things that you can and cannot control. I guess the first thing is that you need to remember that platforms often have policies that you sign. So when you’re signing up for something, you don’t just want to just put in your information and just scroll, scroll, scroll, accept, and then you’re done. Because you want to be aware of how your information may be used, because that is how an ad is being sent to you. It’s through data information that they have that is often sold to different places or that companies buy in order to target you. So first, you want to be aware of what platforms you are on and maybe how they might use that data. If you’re okay with that, some people really like that their ads are personalized. They’re like, “Yes, I like that I get ads that I like.” Some people don’t like getting ads. But you have to be aware that if you’re going to engage in certain platforms, especially social media platforms, that you are going to receive ads, because that is a revenue source for them, and they are also a business. They’re not just a person or a platform for your specific entertainment. That is one of their main goals, yes, but one of their main goals is also revenue. So understand their business.
Two, once you’re actually in that platform you can choose who you engage with on that platform organically. So if you find that certain communities or certain people are bothering you, or certain businesses are messaging too much, you can use not only the in-app settings to unfollow. You can unfollow people, you can block them. When it comes to email communications, you can unsubscribe things like that. I always unsubscribe, block, I add to spam, as many things as I can, if I don’t want to be bothered. And then understanding that there is a difference between, again, that organic and paid post. So if you’re seeing that something is saying “sponsored,” then you want to make sure that you just understand that was created specifically in a way to get you to take some type of action, and that comes with seeing influencer content as well. That’s like, partnerships. Often you’ll see that it says “ad” or again, it’ll say sponsored. But you want to make sure that you’re just aware of that, because maybe you’re hearing from someone that you trust, and you’re like, “Okay, I’m gonna buy that immediately.” But if you see that there’s also some type of, like, kind of money attached to it, then you might reconsider whether you want it or not. That doesn’t mean that just because something sponsored that, “Oh, don’t buy that, it’s just an ad.” No, it’s really up to you. You’re in control of your own buying power, but if you are going to be using platforms, you’re going to receive ads.
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