Friday, October 28, 2016

Why Do Most Writers Trail Katy Perry On Twitter By 93M Followers?



What must it feel like to have 93,705,562 followers on Twitter?  Katy Perry can tell you. She is ranked on Twitter Counter as having the most followers in the world on the social media platform that just laid off 9% of its workforce because of growth and profitability issues. Maybe the singer can send out a few supportive tweets to Twitter.

Twitter’s handle on Twitter has the ninth-most followers, at 57.269 million.  Twitter has other spots on the list, including Twitter Sports and Twitter Español.

It’s interesting to see such a huge disparity so quickly on the list.  For instance, No. 100 is Beyonce Knowles.  Most people wouldn’t think of her as so far apart in popularity or success as Perry, but 98 spots separate them.  She has "only" 14.613 million followers.

Other tech and social media companies rank on the Top 100 list, including Google at No. 83 and Instagram at No. 19.  You Tube is No. 5.  Facebook didn’t make it, nor Pinterest.

Several Jenner-Kardashian members make the list as well.  Five of the top seven spots are singers.  Barack Obama is the highest-ranking politician at No. 4 with 78.343 million followers.

In the TV Talkshow wars, The Ellen Show leads the way, at No. 8, with 62.895 million followers.  Jimmy Fallon is next, at No. 15 overall, with 43.197 followers.

The leader in print media?  The New York Times, at No. 26, with 31 million. TV news was led by CNN, No. 33, at 28.9 million, but ESPN took up two different spots ahead of it for top TV honors.

Absent from the list were writers and authors.  It may not be surprising, given writers would rather write for money and pleasure and not have to get sucked into Twitter wars.  But it is a calculated mistake for authors not to have a presence on Twitter.

Social media helps generate sales, pushes your brand, and positions you to have a voice in the daily dialogue of life.  Some celebrities with large followings will even sell their influence with paid tweets, follows, and shares.

On the other hand, do large Twitter followships correlate to significantly more product sales?  Does Twitter create a demand – or do you already want their stuff and thus, you follow them as a fan?  Still, the numbers don’t add up.  Katy Perry doesn’t sell 93 million albums or concert tickets in a year.  Justin Bieber doesn’t sell anything near what his 85 million or so Twitter followers would suggest he should sell.

No doubt, some of these Twitter follower numbers are bought or bogus.  It’s hard to believe that certain institutions don’t have a strong presence on Twitter but it’s also harder to believe that Perry has over six times the following as Beyonce.  Bey knows marketing and has a machine out there, not to mention a huge loyal fan base.  If she can muster up 14 million Twitter follows, how do others triple and quadruple her?

A lot about Twitter remains a mystery or falls under a cloud of suspicion. Just how many people use it with any regularity and how many sales does it lead to?  The company itself struggles to make money or grow.  When one tweets, how many people read a given tweet?

BrandWatch.com, earlier this year, showed that Twitter had 320 million users – about a fifth of the 1.71 billion FB users.  Google+ supposedly has 300 million users but I don’t know a single person that actually uses it.  Instagram was 400 million, LinkedIn 450 million, Pinterest 100 million and YouTube a billion.

Interestingly, social networks earned just 8.3 billion from advertising in 2015.  That seems like a tiny amount given the Internet has 3.17 billion users. There are 2.3 billion active social media users. That’s an average of less than four bucks per  social media user each year.

One million new active mobile social users are added daily – one every 12 seconds.  It’s mind-boggling.

There’s still a lot to figure out with digital media, in terms of how users and the tech companies can profit from all of this technology and communication.  Writers need to be a part of this if they want to raise awareness for their books and brand.  You don’t have to be Katy Perry to know this.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2016 ©.
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