5 years ago. I opened my first account on Weibo just because I could follow my favourite Chinese singer Bibi Chow. After that, social media become a huge part of my life and I need to spend several hours everyday on them, not only as I can know a lot of news all around the world. Most importantly, I can follow the first hand updates from the celebrities I like.
Undoubtedly, we feel closer to the stars’ lives since we have social media. Judging from the Twitter’s top 10 most followed accounts, we can see that there are eight of them are celebrities. People used to devour celebrity magazines or newspapers to get the latest on who is dating whom and who wore what designer to which premier. Now, people can follow Katy Perry, Talor Swift, Rihanna and others on Twitter, Instagram to see what they are doing right now.
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| Twitter’s top 10 most followed accounts |
Meanwhile, celebrities also enjoy the benefit from the groundswell. For pop stars like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are great ways to interact with fans and update them with their latest news, concert tour dates, and general thoughts. But it can also be used as a very effective marketing tool for self-promotion. Just like Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff tell us five objectives to engage in the groundswell: Listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing. Many celebrities are also doing the same things on social media to build up their brands and keep their names current.
Listening & Talking
One of the biggest ways celebrities use social media to build their brand is by getting closer to their fans. Using Twitter or Instagram gives a star the chance to talk to his or her fans in a relatively safe environment. Since people love "talking to" their favorite stars, this endears celebrities to their adoring hoards even more. A retweet from someone you love is cause for celebration and it makes you think the stars you love really are just like you. Like the K-pop star Nichkhun is an activist on Twitter and he often has fan talk with his fans on Twitter. Thus it makes the fans feel like he is not just a star standing on the stage, but also can be a friend standing by their sides.
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| Screenshot from Nichkhun's fan talk |
Energizing, Supporting & Embracing
Celebs have plenty of opportunities to market to a captive audience on the social media. Sometimes this is done so well that fans don’t even realize it’s part of an advertising campaign! As part of Katy Perry’s 2011 California Dreams tour, fans’ tweets were displayed over the Jumbo-tron during her live concert performance to get the crowd interacting with the show. For the first time ever, concert goers were welcomed to each show by giant on-stage screens that display live fan pictures and tweets from the event, giving everyone in the audience the chance to share their thoughts, excitement and anticipation before Katy appears on stage. Katy got the tweets started by tweeting the hashtag for each show the day of the event. A mini-version of Tweet-to-Screen also appeared on Katy Perry’s tour website to allow any fan anywhere in the world to participate in the excitement. This is a great way for her to get feedback on the show and gain followers she might not have had before, but it’s also ideal for strengthening fan loyalty!
Tyra Banks is the undisputed queen of social media. She has over a combined 11 million followers on Facebook and Twitter, and 1.2 million Instagram fans. As the founder of America’s Next Top Model (ANTM). Banks truly understands the value of groundswell and utilize it for her TV show.
Since the season 19 on ANTM, the scores of the contestants began to be quantitative. In years past, each week's decision came down to some fashion experts. From the cycle 19, however, the girls are scored in several areas on a scale from 1-10, with Social Media response and sentiment factoring into the overal score, The audience can vote for all the 14 models and leave comments, even a video comments on YouTube! Some comments even can be selected to appear on the show! This campaign lets the audience to fully get involved for the show and enhance Tyra's brand frame. Many fans are looking forward to seeing their comments can be showed on TV. In fact, many fan responses, including comments and video, take up a significant portion of the last few minutes of the show.
Message from Tyra - Be A Fan Judge! - ANTM Cycle 19: College Edition
Nowadays, more and more celebraties begin to use various social platforms as an important marketing engine. Celebs definitely have this social media thing down. Which celebrities do you follow?
Great Post! It's so important for celebrities to have a social media presence, they most definitely have to embrace the groundswell. I think it is interesting that you note how television, an entertainment medium in its own right, is embracing social media and getting the audience involved. I think we'll see more of that in the future.
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