Buying ShoutoutsHas Become Norm for Social Media Expansion

The social media have become an integral part of our daily life. It is not a day when one does not use Facebook or Twitter or Instagram.

People use these platforms for different reasons. Some people use them to promote themselves. One can be a high school teenager who wants to push forward his or her picture. Another can be a link to a “cool” song for the attention of schoolmates.

But the usage can also be on another level. Today, many professional and newcomer photojournalists use social media platforms such as Instagram.

But users, regardless of their purpose, have a dilemma. Unless the person or the institution has an immense number of followers, they will need to find ways to expand the circle. That expansion can be done “naturally” over a long course of time when one person refers the person to another and so on. But that could take a very long time. And as they say in business, time is money.

So what most user do nowadays is to buy shoutouts that would introduce them to a large number of people of the same interest. The fact that the packages are already sorted based on interest, delivers targeted audiences which would be very hard, if not impossible, to recreate and generate in a natural format.

In the case of a photojournalist, for example, purchasing Instagram shoutouts would introduce the photographer to people who enjoy photography. The list could include editors, curators, fellow photographers, etc. If someone likes the photo that the photojournalist has posted, an Instagram shoutout can potentially open floodgates of interests for the photojournalist.

But Instagram is not the only medium that photojournalists use. Many also use Twitter. Buying Twitter tweets has the same impact and works the same way as buying Instagram shoutouts.