Bollywood is not just about the Rs 100-crore club, but is also creating a record of sorts on social media. Priyanka Chopra was recently voted as popular and influential celebrity on social media. Shahrukh Khan’s Twitter account has been nominated for 4th Annual Shorty Awards 2012. Mallika Sherawat became the first Asian star to be invited to the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. Amitabh Bachchan became the first person in the country to have more than 36 lakh followers on Twitter.
The wave of technological advancement has taken over the film fraternity too and how. Gone are the days when film stars were reticent, and monthly magazines were the only window to the lives of one’s favourite celebrities. These stars are no longer banking on their on-screen looks or movie performances, but using the social media to wow audiences with their off-screen persona as well. Each and every update, image, or video that is shared acts to increase curiosity among the fans, thereby keep them hooked. This is only possible in the digital era where everyone is connected via social media. The fans thus hear about events as they are happening, with the ability to follow the most mundane things that celebs do.
Blogging is another growing area of interest. For instance, Amitabh Bachchan’s blog is extremely famous and has a large number of readers. He has used this medium to interact with his fans, which has made him within the reach of the ordinary. Twitter has also helped the film fraternity to express their views on social issues and thus reach out to the whole world. For the record, Shahrukh Khan has been a prolific user of Twitter since he joined in 2010 and has more than six million followers on Twitter.
The user trends are, however, varied. Some stars are just faddists, riding the latest craze, while some use social media to promote their latest films. Stars like Hrithik Roshan, Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi, Deepika Padukone and Madhuri Dixit seem to use it only to talk about their work. But perhaps most compelling of all are the Bollywood celebs who use social media to settle personal scores, outwit and outshine their rivals. Who can forget the (in)famous battle of words between Shahrukh and Aamir Khan on social media, over the latter’s remark: “Shahrukh licked my feet one day”, purportedly referring to his dog.
A stark difference is Salman Khan who uses Twitter to share his thoughts and views rather than for just posting pictures or links of his movies as a part of a promotional stint. He tweets like an ordinary person, promotes his counterparts more than himself and believes in word-of-mouth publicity’. In the world of branding, all this helps in structuring a positive image among his fans. Thus the trends of ‘networking’ and ‘interaction’ on social media become the strategy of enhancing one’s personal brand by making use of tools that can spread information like wildfire.
Simultaneously, the combination of social media and Bollywood has done wonders for movie marketing giants. Whether it is the promotion of a movie or publishing digital posters or hosting contests related to a movie to be released, Bollywood stars, producers and directors know the marketing strategy through social media quite well.
A recent trend among Bollywood filmmakers is to ask for public opinion on their movie through the social media and consider that opinion as final judgment. This trend has been followed by directors like Mahesh Bhatt and Prakash Jha who got help from the audience regarding the selection of the movie posters for their films Murder 2 and Aarakshan respectively. Aamir Khan chatted live on Facebook with his fans about his film 3 Idiots and Amitabh Bachchan played online card games to promote his film Teen Patti. Most recently, Hrithik Roshan promoted Krrish 3 by launching a new microsite which revealed more about the movie along with the number of tweets it received. This encouraged fans to tweet more and at the same time it created curiosity about the film.
This is thus clever and strategic use of social media – to promote, connect, put one’s views forward, avoid being misquoted and raise popularity. There is no denying the fact that social media has become a very crucial part of the film industry. The young generation is a tech-savvy one and social media has changed the dynamics of interaction between celebs and the world. How one uses social media is highly individual and immune of judgement about its usage. However, studying how these celebrities use the medium strategically certainly can provide insights to budding social media enthusiasts as well as social media experts about its increasing influence and power.
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