While many companies use social media to gain interest in a product or in the company itself, Jimmy Fallon has been using social media to create interest in him. Fallon uses various social media outlets not only to send out funny material to his fans, but uses it to help reach different audiences to bring ratings to his show. This use of social media outlets such as Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube has helped him grow his audience base, as well as helped push him into a more coveted time slot when he takes over for Jay Leno in 2014.
Fallon first began on Twitter in 2008 and quickly grew to have over 8 million followers. While not every one of his followers turns into a rating, he continues to pull interest towards him as a comedian as well as a talk show host. Fallon frequently incorporates social media into his show as well. He will hold contests with the use of hashtags. He gives his viewers a subject and then gives them a hashtag to put in their tweet. Weekly these hashtags are amongst the highest trending topics on the web. Then once a week he will read the ones he finds the funniest, or most appropriate to the original topic and read them on the show. Any one of his 8 million followers that submitted a hashtag saying could then be inclined to watch the show to see if their tweet gets read on the air. As the funny tweets get shared through Facebook and retweeted, the interest in him and his shows continues to grow.
Fallon also makes excellent use of YouTube. Fallon will frequently tweet about some amazing experience he had with a musical guest and put out a link his own YouTube channel. Within this channel he will create special videos that weren't shown on air, where he performs renditions of the artists songs played with children's toy instruments. These videos create an enormous buzz, and are shared hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook on a regular basis. In addition, he also posts clips of some entertaining moments from his show. Two of his more recent posts, one of a "Lip Sync Battle" that has over 6 million views, and one of a skit he did with Justin Timberlake that had over 16 million views, both went viral. These videos were played on news broadcasts, entertainment shows, and were reposted in every social media outlet possible, creating even more awareness of who Jimmy Fallon is and what TV show he hosts.
In my opinion, Jimmy Fallon does an excellent job of creating a buzz about him and his show, without saturating the market. If he posted videos everyday, eventually people would grow tired of him. But the marketing campaign he creates through his use of social media, by timely, and luckily for him, funny posts, he pushes his brand in a way like no other celebrity does. I had previously watched Conan on a regular basis, and while he does have a social media presence, the pure numbers of Jimmy Fallon reposts from my friends led me to see more and more of his material. The more I saw, the more I was entertained, and I can say that I now watch Jimmy Fallon on a regular basis, mostly due to the fact that I liked what I saw from his various social media outlets. Jimmy Fallon has successfully used social media to market his brand like no other TV personality has been able to.
Great example of how one can use social media to be likable!
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