The top celebrities are bigger than the bigger brands on social media. They pull bigger audiences, higher engagement and generating greater buzz. All while barely getting out of their pajamas in order to tweet out a few inane observations about their buddies over brunch. It's not clear what their ROI on this activity is, but we suspect it is positive.
So who are the biggest, baddest celebs on social media?
We've seen a variety of lists that rank them by one simplistic variable such as audience size. For example Bieber/Gaga follower race on Twitter is the stuff of self-generating social media legend. For a deeper perspective, the Track Social Celebrity Zone aggregates data from all the major platforms - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Google Plus - and scores celebs not only on audience, but on posting activity, engagement level and buzz.
The result is an overall performance metric that gives the truest measure of who the performers on social media actually are.
So here then are the top celebrities on social media:
The Biebs packs a big social punch spearheaded by an overwhelming domination of Twitter. And it's not so much how big his audience Twitter is (33.64M at last count), but what he does with it: averaging over 200,000 retweets per day, Bieber gets vastly more engagement than any one else on the platform.
When he gets sick of tweeting his dreams he can always go back to his roots and upload a video to YouTube, where he leads the Video Views by some margin.
Rihanna is the celebrity Facebook leader and has the biggest aggregate audience across the major platforms with 66M on Facebook alone.
The caribbean R&B diva may not quite have the level of insatiable mania following her as Bieber, but her fans certainly know what they like.
Gaga has been locked in a follower war on Twitter with Justin Bieber for some time, however her other metrics are not as strong. Perhaps the Monster Army is more concerned with her artistic output than her social warblings? Still though, with an overall performance score of 59.9, Lady Gaga scores slightly better than Facebook itself in the social realm.
The Soccer superstar and generally fashionable superstud, Ronaldo is the only non-musician in the Top Ten. On Facebook he is second to only Rihanna and also maintains a presence on Google Plus.
The crossover latin fusion artist is leading a busy life: recording and producing albums and babies simultaneously, while gearing up for a role in a well-known reality singing competition. But, she still has time to keep her massive social media audience entertained.
Now for those celebrities that were just short of making our Top 5:
6. Eminem
7. Katy Perry
8. Taylor Swift
9. Selena Gomez
10. Michael Jackson
Check out the full list at Track Social's Celebrity Zone!