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Justin Bieber confirmed as one of the biggest influencers alive, with over 100 million followers and nearly 50,000 retweets average per tweet – the highest amongst the top 50 most followed -
7th most followed, Lady Gaga, most uses words ‘love’ and ‘thank’ – this trend follows across the entire top 50
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Cristiano Ronaldo, most followed sportsman alive, has nearly 68 million followers and tweets them most about his CR7 brand
GoCompare Broadband has analysed the tweets of the most followed people currently using Twitter, including high-profile figures from politics, music and film. This research was carried out to show how celebrities bridge the gap between themselves and their followers.
With an estimated 330 million monthly active users, Twitter is a social media superpower that continues to revolutionise the way famous people interact with their followers. This level of exposure online isn’t easy to achieve, so Go Compare have looked at those sat at the top of the pile.
Go Compare researched the content that celebrities are putting out to the world, whether it’s the topics they discuss or the words they’re using. We’ve looked at what makes Obama more worthy of a follow than Trump, and what the likes of Bieber and GaGa do to keep their avid fans wanting more. The top 10 of the 50 we looked at include:
Katy Perry – The Californian singer shot to fame over 10 years ago, and along the way has amassed over 108 million followers, using her profile to mainly promote her tours and releases.- Justin Bieber – Known for his loyal ‘Beliebers’, Justin averages nearly 50,000 retweets every time he reaches out via Twitter.
- Barack Obama – Over 1.7 million people retweeted Obama’s use of Nelson Mandela’s quote in retort to the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally, showcasing the magnitude of his political influence.
- Rihanna – With the huge success of her Fenty brand of makeup and collaboration with Puma, it comes as no surprise that 86% of her tweets are purely promotional.
- Taylor Swift – Something of a social media enigma, even with her removing of tweets and cryptic messages, Swift is still the 5th most followed person on Twitter.
Ellen DeGeneres – The host used her gigantic following for philanthropic purposes when donations were made to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, during which each one of her garnered a whopping 232,000 retweets.- Lady Gaga – The most common words used by Gaga when communicating with her ‘little monsters’ are ‘love’ and ‘thank’, making her one of the most positive to grace the top 10.
- Cristiano Ronaldo – The highest ranked sportsman in our list, 42% of the Portuguese Real Madrid star’s tweets aim to promote his CR7 brand.
- Justin Timberlake – His Super Bowl performance received mixed reviews, but the singer is the 9th most followed person on earth, with ‘happy’ as his most used word.
- Kim Kardashian-West – No list of influencers could exist without a Kardashian, but outside of her consistent ‘breaking’ of the internet, Kim’s most impactful tweet was a charitable call to action regarding the imprisonment of Cyntoia Brown with over 223,000 retweets.
Outside of these 10 are another 40 hugely influential figures, such as Adele and Ariana Grande, with a combined following of over 1.8 billion people. The interactive tool shows how these famous role models continue to conquer the online world, and the topics and words they use to garner their massive followings.
Martyn John, PR and Social Media Manager at GoCompare, comments: “Most of us could probably guess who some of the most followed people on Twitter are, but rarely do we stop and think about the messages these influencers are actually sending to millions of people around the world.
Methodology
The 50 most followed profiles were taken from Twitter excluding general news sites and then pulled their last 1000 tweets. The retweets and favourites from each tweet were taken to create averages then each tweet was compiled to create a word cloud. The tweets were then analysed and put into four categories; self-promotion, industry related, socio-political and general/personal.
