No matter what Taylor Swift does, she can’t seem to miss. From releasing the year’s first platinum album last month and becoming a spokesperson for New York City, to the recent announcement that she will be pulling her music off popular streaming service Spotify—where her song “Shake It” was the service’s most streamed song—she’s never far form the headlines.
Regardless of the stickiness of the music industry’s push and pull with the Internet, not to mention Swift’s role in that conversation, it is hard to deny the PR genius behind such a move and its ability to generate an incredible amount of earned media. But her break with Spotify goes farther than compiling coverage. Her presence on social media and her deeply personal connection with fans is what allows her to skip the intermediaries and keep consumers buying.
According to the New York Times, her most effective promotional work has been through social media, “on Twitter and Instagram, she excels as an authentic personality who establishes direct connections with her audience by doing things like reposting images of fans holding copies of her album.”
It's not news that Taylor Swift is a Twitter behemoth—holding the fifth spot for most followers—but what is really important is the way she uses social media.
Here are the three most important things Taylor Swift does with social media to connect on a personal level with her fans.
- She Posts Pictures of Fans. Her official twitter feed is flooded with pictures of emotional fans holding copies of her album “1989.”
Oh I remember. #TS1989 #taylurking pic.twitter.com/lMWVBXEnar
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) October 31, 2014
- She Gets Personal.
- She is Fearless.
The last time an album sold as many copies as 1989 did first week, it was 2002, I was 12, and going through my 'braids phase'. #nofilternecessary Uma foto publicada por Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) em