Revealing mundane personal details is a deliberate audience-engagement branding strategy

Evidence

Soraya Darabi, former social media strategist for the New York Times, described this approach as strategic: “Say you’re an author, a book aficionado. Most [of your followers] have tagged music as a passion. You might want to throw them a bone about your favorite song. There are a lot of Venn diagram overlaps in this community. It’s to your advantage to be as much as part of a community as possible which means engaging with people’s interests.” In other words, sharing personal information was a branding strategy in that it humanized businesspeople and allowed for a greater connection with their audience. This was, of course, assuming that what one shared was consistent with his or her brand-image. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 659

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines a third authenticity concept: authenticity as curated intimate self-disclosure used strategically to humanize and connect with audiences.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the Venn diagram overlap’ as the actual analytic engine of influencer marketing — authenticity as community-overlap exploitation.
• XREF: Pays off the reader’s noise/silence material? No — connects to Goffman’s self-presentation and to present-day ‘relatability’ tactics of influencers. — connects to: Broadcasting personal data creates audience obligation that enforces behavior — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 567; The Web enabled individuals to apply corporate branding strategies to themselves — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 466; Realist details persuade via metonymy and a borrowed air of observational fidelity.

Broader Connections

• Realist details persuade via metonymy and a borrowed air of observational fidelity. #corroborates (0.82)
• The Web enabled individuals to apply corporate branding strategies to themselves #expands (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 466