How do actors and hosts participate in Social Media Marketing?
Nowadays, social media is playing an important role in marketing a movie, TV series or show. In a recent article, we’ve discussed how reality TV shows are successful because of their online engagement with the target audience. This is because, the audience wants to be part of the conversation. Social media accounts are created for specific movies, TV series or shows. However, these accounts aren’t the only ones participating in the conversation online – the personal Instagram and Twitter accounts of the actors and hosts are used in social media marketing as well.
James Corden – Late Late Show
James Corden is a British comedian hosting an American Late-Night Show, called the Late Late Show. The Instagram account of the show does count 2.8 million followers and the account does have 3 million Facebook-Fans. James Corden himself also participates in promoting the show on social media. His personal Instagram account (@j_corden) has over 5 million followers and his Twitter (@JKcorden) does count 10,6 million followers. James is quite active on Twitter, and half of his (re)tweets are general and are not related to his Late Late Show. The other half of his (re)tweets are related to his Late Night show. James retweets the main Late Late Show account (@latelateshow), those tweets contain small clips of the episode or pictures teasing the upcoming episode. His own tweets about the Late Late show, mostly contains links to the Late Late Show YouTube page (see example below).
On Instagram, James repeats the hashtag #LateLateCaptions under his Instagram posts – in order to receive more engagement. There is indeed a significant difference between comments. A “regular” James Corden post has an average of 2000 comments. The #LateLateCaptions posts are receiving way more engagement, with almost double the amount of comments. The reason of these high amount of responses, might be because James will cover his favorite comment on the broadcast of @latelateshow. This also stimulates the people commenting to watch the episode, just in case James will discuss their comment in the episode. However, James has not been very active on Instagram recently – with only one post in the month of October. There defenitely would be potential in posting regularly and community management.
Jennifer Lopez – Hustlers
Jennifer Lopez is starring in the recently released movie: Hustlers. This movie has its own Instagram page (@hustlersmovie), with around 240K followers. Jennifer Lopez’ personal account has 103 million followers. JLo participated in promoting her movie, while shooting the movie and after it was released. However, her strategy was different than for example James Corden’s approach. Whereas James Corden exclusively promotes the Late Late Show with posts that are relevant to the show, Jennifer Lopez also uses the #hustlersmovie underneath selfies (see below).
In conclusion, social media marketing is extremely important for the promotion of a TV show or movie. There are different tactics of promoting via social media, and using their personal accounts might make it feel more honest or the audience.
What do you think of these social media strategies? Do you know an artist that promotes their content and/or work via social media? Let us know in the comments below!
Until then: Keep Binge-watching,
Maxime, Your Cup of TV
Your Cup of TV 