In two of my previous postings, I have discussed about ant colony analogy with social media. I have also stated that social media are different from ant colonies because we humans have a political side. In this article, I would like to share my thoughts about an issue that is plaguing social media: artificial hype creation or catalyzing interest.

This technique is based on the principle of group dynamics. Group effects have a lot of influence on a person’s perception of reality. We tend to believe that if something is agreed by a lot of people, then it must be true. Now whether this assumption is justifiable or not is not the question here. My point is that this concept can be exploited by marketers to create artificial interest on a subject of promotion. Since every member has one vote on a given social platform, then marketers can catalyze interest by sponsoring a number of social media experts and getting them to vote or create content for the subject of promotion. Once a critical amount of votes have been received, there will most likely be a bandwagon effect. Lots of people who are not on the ‘payroll’ will independently vote for the subject not because they are genuinely interested, but because they are influenced by the group.

In my view, creation of hype is a black hat technique in social media optimization. This is so because it deviates and perverts social media from its initial purpose, i.e. being a platform for collaboration. Even if it is extremely difficult, the social media platform that is targeted by this technique will implement efficient methods to identify and penalize it. My opinion is that these methods will be based on recognizing patterns of biased content, i.e. identify accounts that seem to promote a certain brand.