Stop talking, start listening: celebrities, social media, and your brand.

Ashton Kutcher. Britney Spears. Michael Phelps. Rachel Maddow. Celebrities of all stripes are jumping on Twitter, and by extension, social media. Yet many are using it as a means to talk at their audiences. In doing so, they ignore the power of the medium. You—and your brand—can benefit by listening.

It’s happened quite suddenly: celebrities have found Twitter, and so have the masses. In the last few weeks, we’ve started to hear more and more in the media about Twitter, everything from Larry King/CNN and Ashton Kutcher throwing down in a contest to be the first to reach 1 million followers (Kutcher won), to Oprah doing her first tweet. What started as a small community of early social media adopters has become the CB radio—no, the AOL—of the late 2000s.

I realized this the other day when CNN’s HLN channel started posting “Follow CNNBRK on Twitter for breaking news” at the bottom of the screen. I sat there amazed: Twitter IDs…on CNN?!? Clearly, things have changed, and they’ve changed very rapidly:

Twitter has gone mainstream.

“Getting” social media

This recent tweet from Julian Matthews (@trinetizen) got me thinking: all the recent news about Twitter, all the recent Twitter adoption by celebrities, is going to cause two things: 1) the masses will investigate, and 2) the masses’ impression of Twitter will be hugely impacted by this flurry of celebrity tweeting.

The only problem? If you don’t follow others, you can’t possibly “get” the value of Twitter…or any social media, for that matter.

Why? First of all, Twitter’s value comes from dialogue. Social media and networking were borne out of the desire to connect you to others, to learn from others, to create an exchange, and to share items of interest. When we use it as it was intended, social media is extremely powerful: consider the recent successful Obama presidential campaign.

But when we use social media for monologue, e.g., blasting one-way content at whomever will listen, then we’re not connecting, we’re shouting from a street corner.

Imagine, if you will, handing out megaphones at the various street corners in Times Square. Add some TV cameras to the mix. What would you get? Overwhelming cacophony of very little value.

Yet that’s how many Twittering celebrities are using the site: as one more one-way communication channel. Some seem to be taking the time to respond to fans, but most appear very uni-directional.

That had me wondering: which celebs are following the most people, and by extension, getting a more accurate impression of Twitter? Is it Demi Moore or Ashton Kutcher? Oprah? Larry King? Let’s take a look.

Celebrity Twitter Follow Ratio

Amongst the least dialoguey celebs are, yes, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Oprah and Larry King. Pat yourselves on the back, kids! The news commentator ranks the highest of the group, but even he is only following a mere 46 people out of the 123,000+ following him.

Interestingly, the person most open to the most inbound information is none other than Karl Rove. Whether you think he’s a wiley super-genius or Satan Reincarnate, the man is at least giving the appearance of doing the most listening. I’d say he’s up there in the Most Likely to Get Social Media camp.

In the meantime, his political antithesis, Al Gore, is following 7 people out of 664,000.

Musicians Yoko Ono and Björk are both following over 90% of those who follow them. Yet Mandy Moore and Dave Matthews follow 2 and 3 people, respectively.

In the news realm, CNN’s Rick Sanchez is following over 30,000 people. Talk about casting the net widely! But CNN’s own Anderson Cooper follows a paltry 22.

Finally, comedian Robin Williams is following over 1200 people. Yet comedienne Kathy Griffin, whom I find equally hilarious, has only posted two tweets and follows no one. Kathy, here’s your perfect focus group for jokes!

Your brand needs to listen, too

And I guess that segues into the punch line for my post: like these celebs, you need to listen to your audiences—your market—if you want to understand social media: how it works, the advantages, the disadvantages, and the power it provides. Not power to blast your one-way message to waiting millions, but the knowledge, connections, conversation and feedback it provides.

Because if all your brand is doing is barking on a street corner with a megaphone, you ignore the competitive advantage provided by engaging your market. You ignore market feedback, specific market needs, advice on what to avoid pursuing, and perhaps just some really good ideas. By not listening, you won’t really “get” the power of social tools.

You leave your social media “success” up to the power of your brand’s celebrity—or lack thereof. And you do so at your competitive peril.

Caveats

I’ve excluded Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and others where their tweets were clearly done by staffers. Britney Spears was included because her staff differentiates between her tweets and those of her manager/publicist. There are other minor celebrities, some of whom you may feel unnecessarily excluded, that I bypassed simply because I didn’t know much about them.

Obviously, also there is a human limit to the number of people you can follow before the resulting onslaught of information becomes unmanageable. So while MC Hammer and others may be following thousands, for them the Twitter experience is likely overwhelming on a good day, repulsive on a bad one. A high following ratio shows openness, not necessarily actual listening. I get that.

Finally, I didn’t link many of the Twitter handles because I simply didn’t have time. I think you can manage.