Social promotion is the result of an old advertising idea being democratized by social technology. Social promotion is simply incentivizing individuals to endorse and talk about a product or service via social media . Celebrity endorsements are nothing new. Just turn on the television and its hard to ignore how many products and services are being promoted by familiar personalities.
Of course, these celebrities are paid by advertisers in hopes that the endorsement will lead to more people purchasing the product the celebrity is promoting. Why does this work? Because the people watching the commercial are likely to identify with, trust or want to be more like the celebrity on a sufficiently large enough scale to warrant the cost of the commercial. They have influence and reach, so paying for them to appear on a TV commercial works.
In a sense social media enables any individual today to become their own mini-celebrity. While individual social media users may not have the reach of someone like Ashton Kutcher, many of them have the same if not greater level of influence on the people they can reach in their network. If enough mini-celebrities (individual social media users) come together to “endorse” a message, the sum of their collective efforts could dwarf even the most recognized celebrities.
Social promotion assumes that paid influence will continue to work online the same way it has always worked offline. The only difference is that online we can all be “celebrities.”
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