Since starting my spring 2013 semester at Liberty University, I have practically shut myself away from pop music as I became a very busy college student. Of course I knew about mega hits such as Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis but ultimately I was away from today’s music.
Well today I decided I would end my drought and I went over to Billboard‘s website and click through their Hot 100 Charts. While scrolling through and noticing various artists that I have grown up with are still relevant within in the industry, two different titles caught my eye. These were #thatPOWER by will.i.am featuring Justin Bieber and #Beautiful by Mariah Carey featuring Miguel.
Being a Public Relations & Advertising major, I realize that these hashtags are not a coincidence. The growth of Twitter, the huge micro blog social media platform, has exploded in active users over the past few years. Back in September 2011, near the start of Twitter’s rise to fame, total active users for the site was around 100 million worldwide. While an impressive number, it does not remotely compare to the popularity it has now.
In a research study that was conducted in May 7, 2013 by Statistic Brain has stated that currently there is over 500 million active users on Twitter. That is an 400% increase in less than two years!
Currently Twitter holds the reigns as second place within the social media sphere while Facebook still reigns supreme. However as reported by Julliette Garside in the article Facebook loses millions of users as biggest markets peak that was released in The Guardian states that recent statistics show that more and more of Facebook’s young audience is turning away from their site. She further stated “The company warned in recent stockmarket filings that it might be losing “younger users” to “other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook.”
This information has not taken marketing experts by surprise that millennials are leaving the social media site that they have been loyal for years. Within the past few years, a plethora of new social media sites has been on the market. These include Instagram, Path, Vine, Pinterest, and Google+. However, the power of creating and maintaining conversations has seen to become the most effective through Twitter’s revolutionary #hashtag usage.
Many business corporations has already been targeting this platform by creating their own special hashtags. Recently Wendy’s started the #twEATfor1k campaign to promote their new grilled chicken flatbreads. The hashtag was used for customers to be entered in a contest to win $1,000 if they took a picture of the sandwich and uploaded it to Twitter.
For promotional purposes, I am sure that many marketers have had conversations of how can we create more social media buzz within our products. While many businesses would settle with a unique hashtag, the music industry has taken on a brave new world by promoting songs with the symbol in them.
Although it is too early to tell, can selling a song with a hashtag embedded in the title create more buzz than those that do not?
In a 24 hour span that consisted of May 26 to May 27, I did some analytics of comparing the song title #thatPOWER to Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and Mirrors by Justin Timberlake. After breaking down the hashtags into #thatPOWER, #cantholdus, and #mirrors, will.i.am’s song title dominated in conversations among Twitter counts with 3,666 mentions. Mirrors came in second place with 480 mentions while Can’t Hold Us came in third place with 279 mentions.
While #thatPOWER seems to be marketing win within the realm of social media, the popularity of the song within Billboard’s Hot 100 chart shows a different tale. Will.i.am’s song has spent nine weeks on the chart with the peak position being in 17th place. To compare, Can’t Hold Us has spent 15 weeks on the chart and is currently in the number one spot. Mirrors is in third place where it has peaked on that spot in 14 weeks within the chart.
Success within Billboard’s charts does not seem to be phased within strategically implementing built in conversation within Twitter as song titles. However time will tell whether this trend will gain popularity as well as recognition among pop artists.
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