Celebrity Twitter Lessons from Ashton, Britney, Oprah & The Top 20
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Observing the masters is often the best way to learn. Today, let’s take a look at the top 20 Twitter users (by number of followers), and see if they can teach us a thing or two about using this site.
First, let’s categorize these accounts:
- Celebrities: 16
- News: 3 (if you include The Onion)
- Companies: 1 (Twitter)
Now, what can we learn?
Leverage your celebrity
Most of these people were already celebrities with massive followings. They simply used their existing fan base to reach the top of Twitter.
Oprah on Twitter
Ashton Kutcher on Twitter
Lesson for hotels: Use your popularity online and off to direct people to your Twitter account. This is one of the most reliable strategies available.
You don’t have to follow everyone back
None of the top 20 Twitter users do:
Follower/following ratio
Be personable
You’ll note that these top 20 users rarely promote themselves. They’re just being who they are. Perhaps people don’t want to come to Twitter to be sold something?
Ryan Seacrest on Twitter
Ashley Tisdale on Twitter
Britney Spears has a team of publicists that handle her account – which has seemed to work well for her so far. She’s in the top 3.
Britney Spears on Twitter
Shaq, on the other hand, is extremely popular on Twitter because of his transparency and authenticity….
Don’t take yourself too seriously
It’s clear the top 20 twitter users have a lot of fun with their tweets…
Shaq's Twitter account
Lesson for hotels: You don’t always be pushing new special rates. Have fun and enjoy yourself.
Be newsworthy
Accounts like CNN headline news & the New York Times are popular because people want to find information that they won’t get anywhere else.
CNN Breaking News
Lesson for hotels: What news could you break on twitter?
Give stuff away to your fans
Ellen does a great job of doing this:
The Ellen Show on Twitter
Lesson for hotels: Again, this gives people a reason to follow you. What could you give away through Twitter?
Understand your audience
I suppose being a celebutante lets you get away with tweeting like Kim Kardashian:
She might be on the most popular Twitter list, but I doubt other people could reach the top 10 trying this. 
Lesson for hotels: Be aware of the demographics of Twitter.
Take part in a cause larger than yourself
People like Lance Armstrong are promoting something bigger than themselves. Social media is an ideal platform to spread good causes and inspiration.
Lance Armstrong on Twitter
Lesson for hotels: Could you do something good for the world with your Twitter account?
I’m not a celebrity, but I’m doing my best to help hotels. You can follow me on Twitter @hmarketinghelp
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You make some excellent points that should definitely be considered by all hotels using Twitter.
The celebrity factor, while certainly being leveraged, is not always put to practice by many celebs – Oprah has her 56 tweets – most are pretty inane. Britney, of her 193 tweets, infrequently tweets for herself. Most of Ellen’s 395 tweets have to do with giveaways. I’m not sure how long these millions of followers will remain actively engaged if there is not better content.
I’m not really sure that these three have gotten closer to their fan base through Twitter – they seem to be missing a huge opportunity to engage. (That said, I am sure they are all busy with other priorities – namely producing shows that deeply engage their audience.)
Ashton, Shaq on the other hand, interact frequently – in their cases, I think Twitter has helped humanize them and engage them with their fan base.
Actually, the ones doing it the best in my opinion are Ryan Seacrest and Jimmy Fallon – both seem to be multi-channeling well with Twitter supporting their shows and the shows feeding the Twitter accounts.
My three suggestions for hotels would be to use Ryan and Jimmy as examples – they seem to pretty much follow all of your suggestions.