This post by Tarek Riman is an entry to our $4,000 Blogging Contest. Tarek is a Social Media and SEO Specialist, working in the fashion industry, and the founder of seomworld.
Everybody knows that Twitter is the favorite social media outlet for celebrities, who can reach millions of followers with their daily tweets. But how do the really important causes – such as Breast Cancer, Cancer, Movember, Greenpeace, Save the Homeless, etc.) – stack up to those celebrities in terms of popularity and general interest?
I wanted to study this matter using hashtags as a way to make the comparison, using data from Hashtagify.me and CyBranding Hashtag Intelligence. So I chose Hashtags related to causes, values, and global issues, and compared these trends with Hashtags associated with celebrities.
Let me warn you: The upcoming numbers may shock you, or even worse, ruin your mood.
General Popular Causes on Social Media
Starting from the relevant hashtags and the top influencers listed on hashtagify.me for those hashtags, I compiled a list of the global top influencers for some important causes:
1. The biggest environment/sustainability related accounts on Twitter
| 1. | @Treehugger | 260,838 followers |
| 2. | @sustaincities | 60,062 followers |
| 3. | @GuardianSustBiz | 59,599 followers |
| 4. | @sustainbrands | 30,181 followers |
| 5. | @cdcgreenhealthy | 12,381 followers |
2. The biggest “Green” related accounts on Twitter
| 1. | @algore | 2,701,403 followers |
| 2. | @greenpeace | 916,072 followers |
| 3. | @huffpostgreen | 202,784 followers |
| 4. | @Planetgreen | 149,979 followers |
| 5. | @greenforyou | 37,306 followers |
3. The biggest “Cause” related account on Twitter
| 1. | @unicef | 2,317,182 followers |
| 2. | @Charitywater | 1,410,282 followers |
| 3. | @red | 1,044,019 followers |
| 4. | @onecampaign | 736,251 followers |
| 5. | @causes | 132,207 followers |
Celebrities
We can then compare the top 5 celebrities on Twitter:
| 1. | @katyperry | 47,898,456 followers |
| 2. | @justinbieber | 47,353,946 followers |
| 3. | @ladygaga | 40,721,478 followers |
| 4. | @taylorswift | 37,148,051 followers |
| 5. | @britneyspears | 34,411,074 followers |
If we pick the 5th ranked showtime celebrity, @britneyspears, and compare her to all the top Environmental, Green and Cause associated accounts on the net, here is what we get:
| 1. The biggest environment related and sustainable accounts on twitter | 363,462 |
@britneyspears 34,411,074 |
| @Treehugger | 260,838 | |
| @sustaincities | 60,062 | |
| @GuardianSustBiz | 59, 599 | |
| @sustainbrands | 30,181 | |
| @cdcgreenhealthy | 12,381 | |
| 2. The biggest green Related accounts on twitter | 4,007,544 | |
| @algore | 2,701,403 | |
| @greenpeace | 916,072 | |
| @huffpostgreen | 202,784 | |
| @Planetgreen | 149,979 | |
| @greenforyou | 37,306 | |
| 3. The biggest cause related account on twitter | 5,639,941 | |
| @unicef | 2,317,182 | |
| @Charitywater | 1,410,282 | |
| @red | 1,044,019 | |
| @onecampaign | 736,251 | |
| @causes | 132,207 | |
| Total: | 10,010,947 | @britneyspears: 34,411,074 |
So, even aggregating the top 15 Twitter accounts for all these causes, we get to just 29% of the followers of the single account of the 5th ranked celebrity. And what we are really comparing here is information like this:
5m children need water, education & more. We can’t do this without you – be #ThereafterHaiyan for the #Philippines http://t.co/KMbfp5CyDG
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) November 27, 2013
With this:
.@ETonlineAlert @wondersterek I love chocolate…..and sleep…..
— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) November 27, 2013
But just comparing followers for the top accounts doesn’t give us the full picture. How can we try to measure the total engagement for important subjects? I Tried to use these very important hashtags, measuring them for the whole month of November:
- #HIV
- #Sustainability
- #sustainable
- #green
- #GlobalWarming
- #poverty
- #healthy – to add something that could be also a personal concern
When I added up the average daily tweets associated with all the concerns mention above, I got a total of 24,424. For comparison, this is barely 50% of the tweets associated with @justinbieber seasonal tour “#believetour”.
| Hashtag/Cause | Daily Tweets | Daily Reach | Celebrity Hashtag | Daily Tweets | Daily Reach |
| #HIV | 3,516 | 32,617,047 | #believetour | 38,484 | 133,952,425 |
| #Sustainability | 3,051 | 4,317,860 | |||
| #sustainable | 1,531 | 2,617,917 | |||
| #green | 9,028 | 20,223,524 | |||
| #healthy | 4,822 | 16,001,052 | |||
| #globalwarming | 758 | 1,972,132 | |||
| #poverty | 1,715 | 3,015,558 | |||
| Total | 24,424 | 80,765,090 |
|
38,484 | 133,952,425 |
Unsurprisingly, the daily reach also had a similar ratio.
I find it shocking to see that most of our society’s interest lies on what celebrities are doing every day: From what gossip the showbiz world is witnessing versus what real issues of our society: Our planet, our health, and helping one another.
But this is also confirmed by Google trends. The volume of searches associated with global warming and deforestation are both decreasing, and they pale when compared for example to One Direction, which is actually moving in only one direction: “UP”!
Why are people ignoring the things that matter most? Are we just choosing to concentrate on what the media wants us to be concentrating on? Did we give up on each other? Did we give up on our own earth?
We should all dedicate some more time to our duties as social beings, share what matters, whenever we see someone asking for help: At least retweet, reshare, raise the awareness. It is just a click away, and that one click makes a world of difference.
