Music + Social Media Case Study: Lady Gaga

Case Study: Lady Gaga

Statistics
(as of 2/21/11 11:20 a.m.):

Facebook fans: 28, 707, 689

MySpace friends: 1,484,587

Twitter followers: 8,345,518

 

Facebook

Facebook “stalking” certainly suffices for those of us that can’t be real-life Paparazzi for Gaga.  There’s more than enough of her to go around on her Facebook page, which has a detailed Gaga bio, 12 music videos linked from her YouTube account, newsletter signup, 44 upcoming concerts, a merchandise/store section, a music player, notes from “Mother Monster” herself (933 of them), photo albums, a discography and a discussion board for the “little monsters” (Gaga fans) to interact.

Seeing as she is one of the biggest names in music, it is to be expected that her Facebook page is immaculate (I’m sure her PR team keeps busy).

One thing Gaga does that I’d like to see more of is link to fan videos. Gaga develops a close relationship with her fans (see Twitter section) but it could be more apparent on her Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/ladygaga

Facebook page grade: A

Grader.com Facebook page grade: 100 percent
(http://facebook.grader.com/page/grade?url=http://www.facebook.com/ladygaga)

MySpace

Mother Monster’s MySpace page is just as great as her Facebook. Everything else is pretty standard – music player, photo albums, videos, shows, blog (which isn’t personally written by Gaga), Twitter stream and space for comments by fans. The edge her MySpace page has over Facebook is the creativity – her background is the artwork from her latest single, “Born this Way.” However, she has a little over 19 times the amount of Facebook fans than MySpace friends, so the difference isn’t that effective.

http://myspace.com/ladygaga

MySpace page grade: A

 

Twitter

I admire Gaga’s use of Twitter. Her tweets are personal and meaningful to her and her fans. What she does best on Twitter is interact with her “little monsters.” She asks her fans to trend topics, for instance, those relating to her single “Born This Way,” released on 2/11/11 (‘BornThisWayFriday’ was trending before the single was released). Lady Gaga widens her fan base by trending topics that can be seen by all Twitter followers. She develops her image as a mother figure to her “little monsters” and strengthens this relationship to her fans through connecting on Twitter.

Although she does this extremely well, she doesn’t do much advertising as far as concerts or appearances. She uses Twitter as a personal outlet, not an advertising outlet.

Side note: Lady Gaga has over 1.5 million more followers than Barack Obama and over 850,000 more than Justin Bieber. All I have to say is WOW.

http://twitter.com/#!/ladygaga

Twitter page grade: A-

Grader.com Twitter page grade: 100 percent
(http://twittergrader.com/ladygaga)

 

Lady Gaga’s overall social media grade: A

Gaga (and her PR team) utilizes all three main social media outlets. Her use of Twitter is much more personal than that of MySpace or Facebook, which are more informational and interactive (videos, music players). I don’t have any complaints about these three sites…I mean, she’s obviously doing right if she’s surpassed Obama and Bieber in number of followers… :)

That’s it, folks. There’s nothing else I can say (eh, eh) (Sorry for all the bad Gaga puns)

 

2/28/11 update: #bornthiswaymusicvideo is trending. Gotta love Gaga’s presence on Twitter…