Twitter Business Lessons from Justin Bieber
If you're not familiar with Justin Bieber (you're excused if you're not a 12-year-old girl), he is 16-year -old singer, who was discovered by his manager on YouTube, apparently after his mom uploaded videos of his performances so his loved ones could see them.
According to What the Trend, Justin Bieber is popular right now because, he "has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him," and his new album was just released. It has to be more than that though. Bieber has frequently been a trending topic for over a month straight. The tweets just keep pouring in, and they're generally not spammy.
The week of Valentine's Day, What the Trend said, "the young Canadian R&B/pop singer has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him! He is trending these days because his solo begins the new version of We Are the World, a song for the relief efforts in Haiti."
The next week, it was attributed to the same thing. The week after that, it was: "the young Canadian R&B/pop singer is trending these days because his new song, ‘Never Let You Go’ was released for download on iTunes this week, as well as a duet with Sean Kingston, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. He also had his birthday March 1st."
Last week, it was: "Justin Bieber's new album My World 2.0 comes out on March 23rd & his fans are excited. He also appeared on Z100.com, QVC, and GMTV in the UK."
(Hat tip to Mashable for keeping an archive of top ten tweets each week).
"It's pretty crazy to think about and just to have all the fans' support," Bieber said of his Twitter status in a recent interview. "Everything's just been wonderful."
So, Bieber has had a busy month. Still, the sheer domination over trending topics that has grown from these happenings has been quite remarkable. Have the Twitter stars just aligned for Bieber or is it all part of the marketing? Either way, perhaps there are lessons here that marketers could take away from Bieber's spark of Twitter interest.
It's tough for a brand to achieve the fandom of a teen idol (though the good news for brands is that they probably have a better shot at their own fandom lasting for the long run, as teen idols for the most part come and go, despite a few exceptions). Twitter is about what's happening right now, though, and pop culture is ALWAYS happening right now.

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