Neoco

Celebrity endorsements have been used to market brands for literally centuries and whilst it’s clear they do have a power over the consumer, it’s often been hard to see the exact power they have increasing sales. One of the benefits of celebrities on social media is that we can actually track their influence and how it impacts the sentiment and following of a relevant brand.

The other day, Fast Company launched a great promotion idea of trying to find the most influential person in social media. After a discussion in the office, the inevitable name of Justin Bieber surfaced (the teen pop star with claims of being the most viewed on YouTube and most tweeted celeb). So, in the interest of science we ran a little challenge:

1. Create a Justin Bieber profile.
2. Get Justin in the top 20% in no more than 10 tweets.

The tweet limit was really important as the way the Influence Project works is by measuring how many people click your link – it’s reactive, not pro-active.

Now considering the site was already monitoring more than 19,000 social media folk, who were actively messaging/spamming their contacts across Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and anything else, getting our JB to the 20% in only 10 tweets was a tall ask. But, if there is one thing I’ve learnt from this, it’s never under estimate the power of word of mouth when driven by delirious teen-bop fans and a very large lesbian fan club.

Next step was to get tweeting. For convenience, I used one of my own existing Twitter accounts. The fact I already have followers is a moot point as none of them would click to vote for Justin Bieber. I know 95% of my followers on this account personally and they are certainly not Bieber fans.

Now all profiles on the social influence site start at zero. Unfortunately, I forgot to screengrab the profile when it was fresh but it was at zero. Create one yourself to see.

So, the profile was created at 17:00 (GMT) and tweeted twice in ten minutes. The result was climbing from rank 19,155 to 6,432. To clarify, that’s a nose-bleed climb of nearly 13,000 places… in 10 mins… in 2 tweets. That puts him in the top 34%. Pretty impressive numbers

So I then tweeted five times in the next seven minutes and saw him reach the top 18%. Target reached in seventeen minutes!

And once more, two hours later.

And finally, once more two hours later. This saw him climb to the top 9%.

What we get to see is the power of Bieber’s fan factor. That only a few tweets in a few hours can deliver thousands of click throughs and take a profile from zero to the top 9%. Whilst it was a fun ‘test’, it still leaves a lot to be considered:

• Would so many people click if it was linked to a product endorsement?
• How many of the fans even cared about the end result?
• What ratio of fans would ‘unsubscribe’ from a similar initiative?

The test was never going to answer these questions, it was just a peep under the curtain of the power of celebs in social media, within which we should also cover the power of fake celebs in social media.

The point is that whilst you may not have Justin Bieber following you, there are likely to be many influencers out there who are advocates for your brand and how many of them do you know? How many of them do you actively engage with and supply with relevant content and tools to empower their messaging about your brand?

If you want to find out more about who the key influencers are for your brand and how to better engage them then just get in touch.

Tags  belieber bieber celeb celebrity culture endorsement experiment fame fan factor fast company followers jb justin media most influential online sleb social social CRM test tweet