Gaga Gives Us Something to Beliebe In.

Yesterday, #49millionbeliebers was the top trending topic on Twitter.  If the hype machine is to be believed, Justin Bieber is the biggest male pop star on the planet right now, yet 49 million is an awful lot of people to have on side, especially as most of the things that trickle back to me about Bieber tend to be negative (and this is from my kids - his target audience.) 

After the Dispatches programme last week concerning fake fans, I decided to run a little test on Bieber's extended harem - Interesting web tool StatusPeople allows you to run a check on any Twitter account - It takes a sample of data and assesses the validity of the account's followers.  Justin Bieber doesn't fare too well.  Only one quarter of his fans appear to be genuine.


Bieber and Gaga have been running a race to reign Twitter supreme and regularly overtake each other.  Both camps can easily claim that it is their legions of fans who are buying the fake followers in an attempt to help their idols achieve pole position.  That is probably partly true but with the numbers involved there has to be a fair deal of management manipulation too.  In fact most top recording artists appear to have their millions of followers bolstered by dubious accounts but can any of them back up these big numbers?  Back to Bieber.

Little Justin has never had a number one single in the UK or US and his last album Believe is yet to reach 2.5 millions sales worldwide more than one year after release - not such a great performance for the world's new pop Messiah with a supposed 49 million disciples.

Neo-Madonna, Lady Gaga has a similar number of fake followers:



Yet, in contrast, Gaga regularly hits the top spot worldwide and her last album has sold five times as many as Bieber's. 

Just a little investigation and it's easy to see why.  It's down to basics.  Haus of Gaga have a better business model.  As discussed in my last blog, social media is not about numbers but engagement.  Gaga regularly interacts with her fans, her Little Monsters.  Using her own website and linking to Twitter and Facebook, Gaga encourages the creativity of her fans and features their input.  She is an all-inclusive polymath to Bieber's stand-offish monolith.  Their Facebook stats show a similar story. 





Bieber has over 56 million likes but only 243, 589 are active, Gaga has 58 million but with well over a million regularly engaging.  Her new album Artpop promises to be the first album which is truly interactive.  It will come with its own app which she describes as 'a musical and visual engineering system that combines music, art, fashion and technology, and a way to share in 'the adrenaline of fame.'  Sounds like a load of old cobblers to me but you have to hand it to Gaga for making her fans feel part of the experience.  She has built a loyal following through making them feel valued.  Many businesses could learn from her terms of engagement, most of all, Bieber Inc.  His fans usually have the privilege of waiting for 2 hours for him to come out and perform and then have to miss the encore in order to get the last train home.  That's no way to treat the people who are keeping your business afloat.  Any business that wants true social media success needs to stop Beliebing and go a little Gaga.