False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Social media platforms do not create 
overnight miracles.
Surely you’ve heard of so-called “social media 
success stories,” where Justin Biebers are 
discovered and then land a record deal. But how 
realistic is this?
It’s still really difficult to reach a big audience 
even if you use social media. In fact, without a 
budget, insiders, or networks, it’s almost 
impossible.
Consider YouTube, for example: in theory, 
anyone can post videos that reach millions of 
people, right? Wrong.
Generally, there are three basic groups of 
posters on YouTube:
Celebrities, such as musicians or comedians, 
and well-established companies,
Original creators, such as the BarelyPolitical 
channel, who are often prolific users that have 
been on the platform for a long time and have a 
well-developed network with other users,
And “normal people” like you and I. This group 
creates about 70 percent of the content, yet gets 
almost none of the traffic.
Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that 
cases of “social media success” involve factors 
other than mere exposure on a platform.
While every so often some people do become 
famous through their YouTube channels, their 
success is really due to luck and external 
factors, and not to the platform itself.
For example, Justin Bieber did get famous after 
posting videos on YouTube, but only because a 
music producer stumbled upon his videos and 
used his own resources and networks to 
promote him further. It’s unlikely that organic 
views and likes by regular users alone would 
have led to the success that Bieber enjoys 
today.
In other cases, people have become famous on 
social media because the platforms themselves 
promoted them.
For example, YouTube used to feature hand-
selected videos on its front page, and these 
videos obviously gained huge amounts of traffic. 
Twitter, too, used to provide users with 
suggestions about which celebrities to follow, 
thus giving those accounts hundreds of 
thousands of followers.
Nevertheless, such examples will be sold as 
“social media success stories” by marketers, as 
if those successes were somehow replicable.