Traditional Versus Social Media Celebrities

In the past, brands looked to celebrities to boost their image through appearances in ads and other forms of endorsements. However, celebrities are increasingly losing these opportunities to new, social media celebs who boast massive followings and a high level of engagement with followers.

Celebrities can only do so much for a company since customers interact more with content than brands these days. In many instances, only celebrities with active social media accounts and an engaged following are even worth considering as brand ambassadors. Otherwise, fans might not even notice their participation in campaigns.

But Why Social Media Celebs?

Since there are many musicians, actresses, and other traditional celebrities with active social media accounts, why bother going for social media celebs? It’s simple really. They are much cheaper to hire, easier to please, easier to work with, and the engagement is usually much higher. Better to reach a highly engaged audience of 200,000 than to tap into millions of followers who only tune in every so often to see what a celeb is up to, if at all.

In fact, a significant portion of followers for celebrity pages are just news media companies and journalists hoping to see a tweet or Facebook post worthy of writing about before anyone else. These are not fans a brand can hope to tap.

Traditional Celebrities Still in High Demand

Even so, there is a high demand for celebrities, especially for luxury and other high-quality brands preferring the prestige of a well-established name and face. For instance, stars like Beyoncé, Kevin Hart, Taylor Swift, and numerous athletes continue to be in high demand. However, these are traditional celebrities who are also social media celebrities in their own right.

Taylor Swift, for instance, has 79.1 million followers on Twitter. Every tweet she posts get thousands and tens of thousands of retweets, likes, and responses. Likewise, on Facebook more than 23 million people like Kevin Hart’s page, which is super-impressive as far as Facebook and page likes go.

Beyoncé, on the other hand, needs no social media platform to mark her success and the influence she wields over her fans. She is one of the most talked-about female entertainers and has weaved her way in and out of controversy based on her performances, her views on race relations and feminism, and her high-profile marriage to rapper Jay-Z.

Even though social media celebs are giving traditional celebrities some serious competition, there are enough endorsements to go around for everyone in their niche.

But, if more traditional celebrities want to land big endorsement deals and stay on top of their game, they’ll need to boost engagement with their followers by building two-way communication streams.