Lady Gaga: Queen of Pop or Queen of Social Media?
By Hannan Ben Slimane, Intern
Allow me to introduce you to the 26-year-old New Yorker known worldwide for her controversy and her talent to generate buzz (but most importantly for being a pop star), Lady Gaga.
Today, a lot of artists use social media such as Twitter and Instagram (Rihanna is an Instagram addict for instance, posting a dozen of pictures a day) for a variety of reasons. I find it interesting to study how celebrities use social media, whether for their private or professional interest. For example, should celebrities use social media as management crisis? If so, how? Recently, the uprising R&B singer Frank Ocean revealed he was homosexual/bisexual (we still don’t know, but who cares?) via a letter he posted on his Tumblr. There is a lot to talk about with this subject, but let’s focus… back to Lady Gaga!
Lady Gaga, megastar in the music industry, is one of the people that use social networks wisely to gather her fans and directly communicate with them. Her fan base, also called “Little Monsters, “is a real community acting together to support Gaga and they use social media as a tool to communicate directly with her. Of course for Gaga, it is also a way to generate business because maintaining a good relationship with her fans will increase their appreciation and support. Also, when Lady Gaga engages with her “Little Monsters,” they feel more involved in the superstar’s career. There is no better feeling than recognition for fans from their idol.
So, how does she do it?
First, Lady Gaga is present in a wild range of social media platforms:
– Youtube (1st artist to reach 1 billion views on Youtube in March 2010)
– Tumblr
Second, when she publishes content on her social media platforms (and it is really her! Well at least concerning her Twitter page), it is all about her “Little Monsters.” Her fan base is huge on Twitter and very active. She cares about her fans and shows it by following a lot of them on Twitter. Also, we can often see “Trending Topics” from her fans promoting her latest videos, singles, tour dates, etc. We can call it a win-win situation: the artist engages with the fans while the fans support the artist.
Recently Gaga went beyond interacting with fans via Twitter and Facebook by launching her own social media called LittleMonsters.com. Lady Gaga wanted to have a place for her fans where they could express themselves, share Gaga-related content and interact with each other. The platform was created by startup Backplane, and is mostly based on sharing visuals and rating contents (can be compared to Tumblr or Pinterest). Blackplane ’s future plans are to create social media platforms for other celebrities.
Since everything Gaga touches turn to gold, there is a huge chance that LittleMonsters.com will be successful.
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