When Celebrities Tweet: 3-Point Strategy to Leverage Celebrity Power, Part 1

I was recently at SocialFresh, a social media conference in Portland, and someone asked the Facebook and Twitter ROI panel about leveraging celebrity endorsements.  We have several clients that can boast celebrity backing so this question was of great interest to me.  The fellow who posed the question lamented about the short-lived spike seen when a celebrity tweets about their product and wanted any insight into capitalizing on that fleeting moment and creating a more lasting, long-term effect.  Great question!

We recently had a “big time” celeb (500,000 followers on Twitter!) tweet for one of our clients and had to put our 3-point strategy to test.

1. Be Prepared

Our celebrity had mentioned that he might be interested in tweeting about us.  That’s all we needed to kick into action and put together a long-term plan that included:

• Call a SWAT team meeting – You have a SWAT team right?  The group of people who are the brain trust of your social media program, the thought leaders of your company, the ones that think on their feet and have a natural marketing sense.  If you don’t have a SWAT team – put one together now.
• Cheat sheet for the celeb – Go ahead, put words in their mouths!  They are very busy people and you can help by providing ideas, reference links, and yes, even actual tweets for them.  They can decide what they’re willing to use.
• Include a call to action – Be sure to let your celeb know what you want his/her followers to do with this endorsement.  To measure the effect of the endorsement, try to make it a conversion that can be tracked.  In our case, we wanted them to become fans on our Facebook fan page so that we could further educate and engage with them, well beyond the celebrity tweet.