Keeping up with the everyday lives of celebrities and influencers has never been easier, due to the rise and popularity of social media platforms. Instagram, for example, connects fans to get the backstage pass into their favorite influencers lives, as they get access to their photographs and can form a deeper admiration for their favorite influencer. But, Instagram has also turned into a marketing platform for the self. Influencers have started using this social media platform and the ever-present connection to their fans as a way to sell personalized products and to create revenue. For example, Kim Kardashian-West uses Instagram to share photos of herself and of her self-created products with her 119 million Instagram followers.
According to Alice Marwick, the act of self-branding is a “strategic creation of an identity to be promoted and sold to others” and is a “set of practices and a mindset, a way of thinking about the self as a salable commodity” (Marwick). Kim Karashian uses the act of self-branding on her personal Instagram page by promoting her makeup and perfume lines through a plethora of pictures and Instagram stories. Karadashian markets and promotes these lines all herself to deliver a personal touch and to add authenticity to her products. When her fans buy her product, Kardashian wants her fans to feel as if they are buying something straight from her own make-up cabinet.
Marwick states that that personal touches create authenticity which then leads to larger revenue outcomes, this authenticity then constructs a business-targeted self-presentation that establishes a more reliable brand (Marwick). With a following as large as Kim Kardashian-Wests’, she can create a successful business, no matter what it is, due to the size of her following. Kim Kardashian is apart of one of the most famous families, and she capitalizes on this. Turning yourself into a brand is strictly an outcome of Web 2.0 and branding ones self can add to their influence over others. It is a cycle of popularity and influence. Kardashian makes a profit off of her Instagram followers through the way she practices and markets her self-brand, reinforcing the way she can sell products to her fans that they will buy. Web 2.0 makes self-branding possible as it “would be impossible without the affordable means of information distribution that the internet provides, is intrinsically linked to the features of social media technologies that make self-promotion on a wide scale possible” (Marwick).
Kim Kardashian uses the platform of Instagram to manage impressions and to keep up her relevance in the world, so that she can continue to be an influencer in this day and age. The online social media platforms and the internet make this attainable as online, it is easy to broadcast oneself, she can reach a large audience of over 119 Million followers who are tuned into her profile, and she can easily market her products. Kim is getting older and she wants to maintain her power over the world. Because of this, Kardashian manages impressions to prove her worth, her celebrity, and her status in the selection of what she chooses to post on Instagram. Whatever Kim selects to publicly post on her public profiles, they will automatically get attention from fans, media, and the general public, creating an envious and impressed audience. Besides from posting her KKW makeup brand and perfume lines, she also promotes herself as just the famous Kim Kardashian.
Kardashian does this by performing celebrity and posting photos of her idealized body, envious tropical vacations she often takes, her seemingly perfect marriage, and everything else that adds to the luminous lifestyle she portrays online. Kim Kardashian has the power to be an influencer and an empower through her successful brands and painting her influence over others online.
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