Bollywood Celebrities on Twitter – What Brands can learn from Twilmy Tweets?
Priyanka Chopra is down with flu, Gul Panag is leaving on a trip to Masai Mara, Karan Johar is looking for a title for adaptation of “stepmom”, Dino Morea had KFC burger this weekend, Pritish Nandy is in Delhi today and Preity Zinta is currently reading ’The Power of Positive Thinking’ by Norman Vincent Peale.
And none of this is mere gossip! All the tidbits are definitely authentic pieces of info for they come straight from the celebs’ mouths or rather from their tweets! Thanks to the beauty and simplicity of micro-blogging, Twitter is no longer an addiction for just the Priyas and Amits of the world; but it’s an absolute hit with the Bollywood glitterati as well!
The latest tweet from Priyanka Chopra reads (copied verbatim):
Dhan ta nan..my first contest only ma tweeple!50 pesonally aughtographed KAMINEY audio CDs up for grabs! Try it!! http://tinyurl.com/ne4kox
Bollywood Celebrities on Twitter
A contest on Kaminey by Priyanka Chopra herself! From updates to promotions, Bollywood celebrities have wisened up to all the right tactics to engage and interact with fans of this generation. From websites to forums and social networking sites, to official fan clubs, blogs and now twitter, they know exactly where and how to reach their relevant audience today. In fact accessing a celebrity was never before this easy! Instead of fans running after celebs to get their updates, celebs themselves are updating and directly interacting with their fans. They have understood the power of personal branding & the multiple merits of user-engagement in this age led by social media; each one of them is having their own reasone-d-tweet but nevertheless they are quite active on twitter now. Here are some interesting examples of how Bollywood celebrities are using twitter for different purposes:
- Engagement & Interaction: Though all celebs are interacting but if I’ve to take one example then I must say it’s Gul Panag who knows the art of engagement & interaction with fans. One of the most active Bollywood celebs on twitter with 12,849 followers, Gul not only keeps on posting her updates, rather she responds back to tweets of her fans on a regular basis. Despite no release, Gul because of her tweets is definitely a hit in tweetistan.
- Promotion: How to promote subtly without being treated as spam can be learnt from Priyanka Chopra who tweets in a way where she manages to promote her upcoming movies by interacting with her fans. And what a better way to reach out to 21,591 fans at one go, with an effort as miniscule as typing a 140 char tweet!
- User feedback: User feedback is what Karan Johar or Tarun Mansukhani has been using twitter for primarily. Karan wanted some feedback on a movie title and look at the kind of response he got from the creative brains and his followers at twitter. Now that’s some food for thought for popular brands seeking quick & effective user feedback!
Beyond these, celebs like Pritish Nandy has been interacting with his followers through some very intellectual tweets which further fortifies his personal branding amongst his fans and followers or how can I forget Mallika Sherawat who knows the art of being in news even when there is nothing new to be announced. With updates like this or news like this & this, do you really need a hit movie to make headlines? After all there is twitter & twitter’s office to keep your publicity going without any releases at the box office!
Mallika Sherawat at Twitter office
There are many more to this list, Preity Zinta, Purab Kohli, Shahid Kapoor, Uday Chopra etc. are all hooked on to twitter now. In a country like India where Bollywood is as good as religion & celebrities no less than idols, Twitter’s popularity amongst Bollywood celebrities is a definite indication of its rising popularity amongst the masses! There are people who have joined twitter just to follow & keep in touch with their favorite stars.
Considering the influence which celebrities have on Indian consumers and twitter becoming twilmy I’m wondering if the next trend will be celebrities endorsing brands on twitter or promoting services amongst their followers. How about celebs doing a twee-PR for the products in which they genuinely believe in or tweeting feedback about the brands/services which they actually love? After all when Gul updates all those lovely pics from her iphone, tweets about booking her international tickets at Cleartrip or Sonam posts about spending her free time with Xbox, aren’t these indirectly working positively for these brands 
?
*Follower count as on date of post
Nice post!. I can bet Twitter is becoming a big fad amongst not just celebrities but politicians as well. I follow Shashi Tharoor and get gud some insights. May be you should put one on now politicians or sportsmen are using it to promote their personal branding.
kanu u are v right in sayin that today it is v easy to acces celebs adn a completely new range of methods for movie promotions have come around..hats off to ur analytical skills..congrats for writing so lucidly!
Kanu, good article. Twitter is the next in thing and will play a vital role in all kind of brand promotions in just few days. I am sure after reading your article, Gul’s PR agency is preaparing an endorsement bill to be given to cleartrip.
Dear kanupriya, Nice post. Its really great when you are updated abt stars by stars themselves!!! But, i still doubt that some stars are not tweeting themselves. Especially mallika. The frequency in which she tweets, and the lingo she uses can.t be of hers. Its some one else doin on her behalf. I am sure all will agree with me as sone words even we heard for some time. For Others like karan johar, dino morea, priyanka chopra, shashi tharoor etc we can say they are genuinly tweeting themselves as they post more personal msgs, and in simple words. Would like to have your take on this too. . .
Fantastic and what a timely post! It’s clearly evident that there Generation Y, Bollywood Stars some kool guys like Pritish Nandy and many more are much more intelligent then so called Brand Gurus and Advertising guru’s in India!
First Facebook and then Twitter the overall power of Social Media is clearly dominating the world of regular stuff.
Simply speaking it’s possible that Google could lose substantial revenue as SEM doesn’t seem to work any more, pay per click model is scary and click frauds are increasing by the minute. SEO and SMO (SOcial Media Optimization are here to stay!)
I just read abt a Indian Digital Agency who is already doing Twitter and Facebook based Research, Marketing, PR and Development worth reading for sure here: http://ow.ly/jpF3
In SImple Words Facebook, Twitter, Social Media and the whole of Web 2.0, Web 3.0 movement rocks!
Hi Kanu nice post….also how can one forget about Kailash Kher he is a regular tweeter….Looking fwd to more articles from u
[...] First a small update: Few days back, one of my article came on pluggdin, check out: Twitter getting Twilmy: An opportunity for brands? @ http://www.pluggd.in/bollywood-celebrities-on-twitter-what-indian-brands-can-learn-from-twilmy-tweet... [...]
Even Madhur Bhandarkar is on twitter.
@mbhandarkar
[...] by Kanupriya on October 24, 2009 I had earlier written my thoughts on bollywood celebrities on twitter at pluggdin wherein one of my observations [...]
Very true – Twitter is enjoying huge popularity among bollywood celebrities. You can see the long list of celebs who are present on Twitter here –
http://grazitti.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/increasing-popularity-of-twitter-among-bollywood-celebrities/
Bollywood celebs are using Twitter smartly for marketing their upcoming movies. See what strategies these celebs are using to generate interest about their latest flicks.
http://grazitti.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/indian-cinema-using-twitter-for-marketing-movies/
For anyone interested in following celebrities on twitter, you can checkout http://www.celebtwits.com