The Oscars, Twitter, and Our New “Influencer Discovery” Tool
by Robert McEvily
Kevin Hart, who was supposed to host last night’s Oscar ceremony - but who pulled out after sincerely apologizing to the LGBTQ community regarding homophobic comments he made in 2011 - has 34.9 million followers on Twitter. Show producers Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss decided to forgo a host entirely. While watching some of the broadcast, I couldn’t help but wonder how this decision affected the show’s buzz and its real-time publicity.
Last week I met (and met with) a colleague here at Shareablee who knows a thing or two about social media influencers. Ann Sciandra (pictured above) is our Senior Product Manager, and she’s working on our exciting new “Influencer Discovery” tool. It allows you to search through our entire Influencer database. You can easily find and select Influencers based on any specific criteria… like, say, audience size, affinity, post content, and lots more.
Zeroing in on Twitter, eyeballs, and the winners last night, let’s check out the top three individuals in terms of followers:
1. Regina King (Best Supporting Actress) - 785K
2. Rami Malek (Best Actor) - 616K
3. Alfonso Cuaron (Best Director) - 283K
Olivia Colman (Best Actress), Mahershala Ali (Best Supporting Actor) and Spike Lee (Best Adapted Screenplay) aren’t active on Twitter. Seems kinda crazy these days for entertainers to not be on Twitter, since they always need to get the word out about their projects. But as some old dude who spoke Latin once said, “Suum cuique.” (Google it!)
Five years ago, when Ellen DeGeneres hosted, she cleverly took that super-famous selfie in the audience with Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jared Leto, Channing Tatum, Julia Roberts and Lupita & Peter Nyong'o. (Kevin Spacey was also in the shot, but let’s not go there.) Talk about super-charged social media juiciness! Naturally, the selfie went viral in a heartbeat. And Ellen is huge everywhere, especially on Twitter.
Check out the last five Oscar hosts, ranked by Twitter followers, and let’s throw in Kevin Hart…
1. Ellen DeGeneres - 77.1M
2. Kevin Hart - 34.9M
3. Neil Patrick Harris - 27.1M
4. Seth MacFarlane - 14.3M
5. Jimmy Kimmel - 11.5M
6. Chris Rock - 5.26M
Man oh man, you gotta think that was a really tough decision for Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss. With 35 million followers, and tweets during the broadcast, Kevin Hart represented a ton of opportunity and enormous extra buzz. (Any celebrity with comparable numbers would likely suffice.) We’ll see what happens when the engagement results come in…
In the meantime, keep in mind…
With the ability to segment the engaged audience (in this case, all Oscar viewers), Shareablee’s “Influencer Discovery” tool enables you to pinpoint the people who can help you exceed your campaign goals. (Which micro influencers were tweeting about the show? And the people using the Oscars hashtag - what else are they doing online? That’s all accessible with the tool.)
Our new “Influencer Discovery” tool is coming very soon. (And I mean VERY soon.) Stay tuned to our blog posts and social media for more updates!