Popularity Matters

When Meryl Streep gave the commencement speech to the graduating class of 1983, she shared some remarkably relevant words:
“Real Life is actually a lot more like high school. The common denominator prevails. Excellence is not always recognized or rewarded. What we watch on our screens, whom we elect, are determined to a large extent by public polls. Looks count. A lot. And unlike the best of the college experience, when ideas and solutions somehow seem attainable if you just get up early, stay up late, try hard enough, and find the right source or method, things on the outside sometimes seem vast and impossible …”
When we were all younger, it’s undeniable that at some point, probably in high school, we equated our popularity to our status or even value. The friends you had mattered. The clubs or social circles you belonged to mattered as well. The more friends you had, the more popular you were. The more popular you were, the more people wanted to be your friend. For some, it was a great time in life. For others, it may have been the time they were just trying to get through until they graduated, and got into the “real world,” where that sort of thing didn’t matter. Thing is, in today’s world, popularity is still very much an influencing force. Whether it’s wrong or right, popularity does matter.
So, here we all are. All of us adults now, out of high school and college and trying to make our mark here in the “real world.” Although, you have to admit, sometimes doesn’t it still have its parallels? With the advent of social media, the element of popularity has been very much brought back into the forefront of our everyday lives. The use of social media and its efficiency in spreading information between people so quickly, really proves that being popular can hold great power.
Think about how many businesses have Facebook pages now. Everyone, from large corporations to small businesses all over the world have a personal account and a business page. Now, the larger corporations, they are already popular, and probably aren’t too concerned with who “likes” them on Facebook. The smaller businesses, the independent entrepreneurs, or the start-ups, however, do care who “likes” them. Why? Well, it’s just as simple as it was when we were all younger: Popularity by association or appearance. If someone with thousands of friends on Facebook “likes” a business, chances are a lot of their friends may now be exposed to the business page too. If your business begins appearing in the news feeds of the “popular” people on Facebook, your exposure just got a lot bigger. Facebook has allowed for word-of-mouth exposure to become as simple as friends recommending a page.
Of course Facebook is only one of the many ways that social media has increased the influence of popularity. Today, most businesses have a Twitter page as well. Twitter, has also given businesses an economic way to raise brand awareness and consumer interaction in the form of micro-blogging. When people communicate on Twitter, whether it’s on a personal level or business level, they have the ability to share details in an intimate, short, quick way which can enable the feeling of instantaneous value from one another. Twitter shows how the power of the influence of popularity can increase “followers” in hours, minutes, or even seconds. The kind of exposure that Twitter can yield is impressive to say the least; however, it boils down to how many followers you have. And of those followers, how many followers do they have, and so forth. So, once more, popularity by association reigns again.

Here’s the thing, popularity can be fickle. Popularity can be beneficial if the influence derived is worthwhile and positive. However, it can also, just as quickly, perpetuate some of the most worthless and debilitating of influences as well. Who can become popular and why are now defined on much broader terms. It’s not quite as simple as it was when we were in high school or college. Then, popularity was reserved for the prom queen or star quarterback. Today, anyone can become a contender in the social media popularity contest. That kind of begs the question, is that good or bad? And furthermore, can popular influence that blows up so rapidly, maintain that status?