This Is How Each Social Media Platform Impacted My Life

Justine Rodes
4 min readMay 21, 2020
Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

The way I use social media has completely changed since January 2016 when I decided to create a Youtube channel. I started my channel to create lifestyle and comedy sketches because I thought I can make someone laugh. That year was a gamechanger for me. I gained the courage to put myself out on the internet for people who are not my family and friends.

Youtube

As I mentioned, Youtube is a big part of my life when it comes to how I use social media. I use this platform to create content for others to watch. I am currently creating videos about topics that relate to mental health. I would say that I mainly produce content on this platform more than I consume. The only content I watch as a consumer is my friend’s videos, self-development, or just really anything that catches my eye that makes me curious. I ended up making a couple of good friends through this platform. This platform gave me an opportunity to speak at a panel at Playlist Live Orlando.

Instagram

Instagram might be the platform I use the most. I mostly use Instagram as an extension of my Youtube channel. The majority of my photos are created from photoshoots. My Instagram would be considered a blog to me. I prepare content and plan what I want to write as a caption in hoping to inspire and impact my audience. I have a second Instagram for personal use to separate my ‘influencer” life and family life.

Twitter

I have had twitter since I was in high school when it was one of the most popular social media websites. I used the platform for social reasons. During the time when Pretty Little Liars was on the air, I would live tweet during the episodes. I mainly use twitter now as one of the platforms to promote my youtube videos and to tweet random thoughts.

Facebook

I have two Facebook pages. I have a personal and business page. I spend 95% of my time on my personal page. This is the social media platform that I use to connect with friends and family that I personally know in real life. I am one of those people that uses Facebook for news updates. My business page is an extension of my brand, but I am not on it too often. The reason I created the business page is to use it to promote to an audience that is interested in the type of content that I create so I can avoid flooding my friends and family’s newsfeed.

Tik Tok

When I went to Vidcon a year ago, I had my channel looked over for feedback on how I can do better. The guy told me to create a Tik Tok because I will thrive on that platform. I joined it because I had nothing to lose and my first video went semi-viral, but after that it didn’t go anywhere. I’ve been using the platform more lately to learn all the cool dances and record some comedy. I don’t use Tik Tok for professional use, but I did link both my Instagram and Youtube to redirect traffic.

Dayflash

Dayflash is a very new app. The majority of the online population has never heard of it. I am only aware of this app because the co-founder emailed me to invite me to be a featured creator for its launch. I said “sure why not”, so they sent me a link to download before it went on to the app. I was growing pretty fast in the beginning because it was brand new and my photos were featured often. Dayflash is similar to Tik Tok where it doesn’t have an algorithm that favors big creators over small creators. The co-founder created the app to compete with Instagram. The users on the app are either models or photographers. I use this app to post all of the photos I already posted on Instagram for exposure or to look at photos for inspiration.

Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are the social media platforms that I give the least amount of attention too. I use Snapchat for random photos to send to friends — I haven’t used Linkedin for a while because I’ve been working for the Walt Disney Company for the past 3 years and I’ve been doing a lot of internal networking — and I only go on Pinterest once in a blue moon to look at food recipes.

To wrap up… I prefer using social media for growing my brand than for personal use because I value-creating quality content to inspire and impact others than making as many friends as I can.

I asked my followers in the past on my Instagram stories on how they see me on Instagram and a lot of them told me that they think of Disney, mental health awareness, and purple (because of my purple wig).

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