by apple tree communications

Influencers

THE WORLD’S MOST FOLLOWED

250M230M210M190M170M150M130M110M90M70M

246.391.948

238.765.171

219.176.469

205.052.285

190.890.058

168.298.657

164.943.105

163.185.985

158.678.275

155.547.664

148.562.370

143.038.051

142.219.550

50M30M10M0MFOLLOWERS

TaylorSwift

Justin Bieber

CristianoRonaldo

KatyPerry

SelenaGomez

KimKardashian

ArianaGrande

BarackObama

LadyGaga

Neymar Jr.

Rihanna

Shakira

Beyoncé

133.715.371

130.748.918

128.654.767

128.354.125

LeoMessi

JenniferLópez

JustinTimberlake

NickiMinaj

126.460.196

121.770.236

Vin Diesel

Eminem

Miley Cyrus

140.178.080

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Taylor Swift

246M

1

Rihanna

190M

5

Cristiano Ronaldo

238M

2

Katy Perry

219M

3

Selena Gomez

205M

4

Who are the most influential people on social media?

With usage increasing exponentially, a handful of users have accumulated millions of loyal followers from around the world who keep an eye on their every post. However, only a chosen few have real influence over global audiences, reaching followers far beyond their profession or area of expertise.

Who are the chosen few?

We have analysed the users with the most Twitter, Facebook and Instagram followers to reveal the Top 20 social media influencers from around the world.

Source: apple tree communications – prepared

65% ARE FROM THE U.S.

ON AVERAGE THEY ARE 33 YEARS OLD

65% AREMUSICIANS

MOST HAVE 7 YEARS OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIENCE

KEY INFLENCERSARE VERY

posting 5 tweetsper day and 5

images per weekon Instagram

60% ARE WOMEN

India and the US have the most Shakira fans in the world AND in both countries the

singer has 4 times the amount of followers she has in her home country of Colombia.

More people follow Cristiano Ronaldo on Facebook than anybody else in the world. The majority of his fans are from Indonesia, where the amount of fans he has is double the amount of fans he has in Spain and Portugal combined.

India has the second highest amount ofObamafollowers in the world

Whilst if it wasn’t for Instagram, Selena Gomez would be out of the Top 20.

INFLUENCE HAS RHYTHM

Taylor Swift a young, American female singer is the world’s biggest influencer across all social media platforms and 13 of the top 20 are fellow music stars. Sports personalities come in second with 3 representatives, 2 are films stars whilst politics and have just 1 representative each.

“Born in the USA!”

Amongst celebrities with the most followers, a high percentage are women, were born in the U.S.A (65%) and are on average aged 33 yrs. Getting

DID YOU KNOW…

into the Top 20 is certainly not an over-night process with the the average lifetime of their accounts being about 7 years. And clearly social media is also not a place for idle thumbs with the top influencers posting at least once a day on average. Brazilian footballer Neymar is the most active, posting up to 18 tweets per day whilst the singer Miley Cyrus is also one of the most active influencers with an average of 2.9 images shared on Instagram per day. Beyoncé is, however, the exception to the rule, with 14 million Twitter followers and only 9 tweets in total.

THE ANATOMY OF AN INFLUENCER

Source: apple tree communications – prepared

110M90M70M60M50M40M30M20M15M10M

111.053.712

83.761.716

70.272.922

62.936.104

62.811.955

60.476.507

54.481.055

54.301.960

47.175.415

46.144.038

45.035.195

44.722.920

37.398.696

6M4M2M0MFOLLOWERS

Adele

DavidBeckham

JasonStatham

HarryStyles

EmmaWatson

WayneRooney

CaraDelevingne

LouisTomlinson

LiamPayne

Ed Sheeran

GarethBale

Zayn

NiallHoran

32.403.392

29.513.049

25.906.489

21.752.372

Jessie J

EllieGoulding

CalvinHarris

VictoriaBeckham

17.152.203

16.909.768

RitaOra

CherLloyd

33.564.452

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SamSmith

Adele

111M

1

David Beckham

83,7M

2

Jason Statham

62,9M

4

Harry Styles

62,8M

5

Emma Watson

70,2M

3

Who are the most influential UK celebrities?

Each country has its local influencers, celebrities who might not be known internationally, but still have a large following in their home country.

Who are the top British influencers? Are singers as dominant as they are in the global ranking? Who’s the most important Brit online?

BRITS MOST FOLLOWED

Over half of the celebrities in the UK top 20were unknowns 10 years ago

If we add up the followers of the 5 members of One Direction the total would be higherthan the combined populations of UK, Germany, France and Spain.

BRITISH STYLE

You might be wondering if singers are as popular in the UK as they were in the global ranking. Yes, once again music dominates the ranking with Adele as the most important UK celebrity on social media even though she was 10 million followers short of making the global Top 20.

Music rules, but singers in the UK don’t have it all their own way as internationally famous Hollywood stars and footballers such as Emma Watson, Jason Statham and David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Gareth Bale all making the top 10.

THE BOY BAND BOOM

Looking further into the UK top 20, we witness the rise and rise of boy bands. All five members of One Direction feature in the list, which means 25% of the celebrities on the list are from one single boy band.

And their popularity continues to grow despite the break up in January. In fact, Harry Styles has the most amount of followers on Twittter. It begs the question, ‘if social media networks existed in the 90’s, would the Spice Girls or Take That be on the list?

Becoming an influencer takes time and dedication with the all of the highest ranking influencers having official accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the exception of Jason Statham and David Beckham (who are not on Twitter). However, it’s not only about “being there”, the amount of interactions is also important. Ed Sheeran was the most active influencer on Twitter, with an average of 12 tweets per day (though he seems to have lost interest in all social media channels since his tour finished in December 2015). Others like Jessie J are totally committed, posting on average 18 images per week on Instagram to her fans!

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowlingis morepopular on social media than Hillary Clinton

Adele has 94 million more followers than Cher Lloyd in 20th position and almost 6 times more Twitter fans.

The only country in the United Kingdomwith no representation in the Top 20 is

Northern Ireland

The “old hands” of the Top 50 (Sting, Eric Clapton, Slash, Phil Collins and Elton John) now wouldn’t get into the Top 10 even if youadded up all of their followers.

THE BRITISH INFLUENCER’S ANATOMY

DID YOU KNOW…

65% ARE SINGERS

28 ½ IS THEAVERAGE AGE

6+ YEARS AVERAGE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

HIGH ACTIVITY RATESKey influencers post 3-4

tweets a day and 4 imagesper week on Instagram

60% ARE MEN

TWITTER GLOBALLY

apple tree communications released its first SocialScene (Twitterscopio) in 2011. The study analysed the accounts with the most followers on Twitter, and even then celebrities were topping the charts.

Who was ranked highest at that time? How has the ‘follower base’ changed in the last 5 years?

Our analysis shows that little by little, women are increasing their influence, with 60% of the top celebrities on Twitter being female (up 5% since 2011). It’s clear that social media has helped Katy Perry boost her fame with her following increasing by 427% over that period of time. Meanwhile Lady Gaga has suffered a decline and now sits in sixth place. We will have to see what happens now that she releases her new album… game on!

Staying active is a must if you want to remainpopular on Twitter. People will only follow or talk about you if you’re actually sharing interesting content. What’s up with Ashton Kutcher? When will Eminem release another album? Becoming famous can happen over night, staying famous is a different matter all together.

Obama is just a couple of months away from leaving the White House, but has still managed to maintain his popularity worldwide. In the past five

The topics that interest people most in social media haven’t changed significantly in the past five years, with the exception of the rise of certain sports. For example Basketball is finally starting to have an international online presence. Five years ago, there were only two sports professionals in the Top 20 (both soccer players). Now however, Lebron James, the Cleveland Cavalier’s player is leading the charge. Five years ago he was in the 78th position, now he’s in the top 20.

years he has rocketed into the top 3 of the global ranking. No other politician has even got close to reaching this amount of followers. And looking at the current presidential candidates, if the election was based on Twitter followers, Donald Trump would be the next to move into the White House, beating Hillary Clinton by over 2,750,000 followers.

THE LAST 5 YEARS OF TWITTER

TOP 20 TWITTER TOP 20 TWITTER

Lady Gaga (@ladygaga)

Justin Bieber (@justinbieber)

Katy Perry (@katyperry)

Rihanna (@rihanna)

Shakira (@shakira)

Britney Spears (@britneyspears)

Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian)

Barack Obama (@BarackObama)

taylorswift13 (@taylorswift13)

Selena Gomez (@selenagomez)

Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ)

YouTube (@YouTube)

Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah)

Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow)

Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake)

ashton kutcher (@aplusk)

Marshall Mathers (@Eminem)

Kaka (@KAKA)

Chris Brown (@chrisbrown)

Twitter (@twitter)

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22.218.294

19.515.796

17.200.267

16.262.044

15.290.655

15.106.344

14.308.686

13.756.766

12.439.975

11.254.668

10.806.281

10.722.415

10.437.125

10.347.143

10.111.784

10.094.587

10.058.292

9.524.058

9.314.673

9.139.715

Lady Gaga (@ladygaga)

Justin Bieber (@justinbieber)

Katy Perry (@katyperry)

Rihanna (@rihanna)

Shakira (@shakira)

Britney Spears (@britneyspears)

Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano)

Demi Lovato (@ddlovato)

Jennifer Lopez (@JLo)

LeBron James (@KingJames)

Barack Obama (@BarackObama)

Drake Drizzy (@Drake)

Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande)

Jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon)

Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian)

Taylorswift13 (@taylorswift13)

Selena Gomez (@selenagomez)

W OOprah infrey (@ prah)

Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow)

Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake)

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90.659.452

87.289.544

84.738.261

79.594.596

62.962.668

61.431.775

60.869.606

55.835.347

46.770.449

46.414.700

44.439.607

44.142.154

41.746.571

40.081.125

38.826.892

37.092.257

36.309.254

33.291.979

33.114.559

31.689.556

2011 2016

Source: apple tree communications – prepared

Job title: InfluencerOf all networks, YouTube is by far and away the most influential. With audience ratings even higher than on TV, it’s the place where anyone can become famous. Some channels have millions of subscribers with updates and videos achieving billions of views. Yeah, we’ll say it again: billions of views! Here’s the list of the Top 10 YouTubers with the most subscribers worldwide: an exclusive club were Spanish speakers dominates, and where videogames and humour are the most engaging topics. If you haven’t heard of them, you better check out their channels… but you might not understand anything at the beginning.

“Lemonade” tweet Last month elRubius posted a message on his Twitter account that included just a word and an emoji. The term was “Lemonade” and, as he later explained in one of his videos, it was part of a contest in which users just had to retweet. In 48 hours the post reached 1.3 million rt’s and became the third most retweeted post in the world. Only Ellen DeGeneres celebrity selfie at the Oscars and a message from one of the band members of One Direction got more

shares. “Lemonade” even got more retweets than the famous images of Barack Obama hugging his wife under the title “Four more years”.

PewDiePie 47,5MCOUNTRY

Sweden Videogames 13.189M - Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

20,3MCOUNTRY

Spain Videogames 4.247M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

elRubius

TOP 10 YOUTUBERS

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_YouTube_Diamond_Play_Button_recipients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_subscribed_users_on_YouTube

43,6MCOUNTRY

Chile Vlog / Videogames 6.168M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

HolaSoyGerman2 CHANELS

52M nigahiga 22,5MCOUNTRY

U.S.A. Humor 3.433M Video views

CATEGORY SUSCRIPTORES2 CHANNELS

18,4MCOUNTRY

Canada Videogames 5.657M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

VanossGaming

15,7MCOUNTRY

México Beauty 1.611M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

Yuya

15,1MCOUNTRY

Spain Videogames 5.375M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

VEGETTA777

15MCOUNTRY

El Salvador Videogames 3.489M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

Fernanfloo

16,4MCOUNTRY

U.S.A. Vlog 2.090M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

JennaMarbles

17,6MCOUNTRY

Spain Videogames 4,717M Video views

CATEGORY SUBSCRIBERS

TheWillyrex2 CHANNELS

by apple tree communications

The popularity and impact of online influencers has increased relentlessly due to the inexorable rise of social media. That’s why at apple tree communication we have been analysing the sta-tistics and the trends behind the different social media platforms out there over the last 5 years. This ongoing study has given us an expertise in understanding who the real influencers are, based not only on the number of followers, but also on the ca-pacity they have to generate high impact, highly shareable content.

Their influence is increasing exponentially and as such they are a key element in the development of digital or integrated com-munication campaigns.

¿QUÉ ES EL SOCIALSCENE?Es un informe publicado por apple tree communications en el que analizamos la evolucion de las redes sociales.

Seguimos:

“Los 100 principales”, las personas más seguidas en España y

en el mundo: los “líderes de audiencia”

Qué marcas lideran las redes sociales

De qué se habla en las redes sociales

Las novedades en comunicación social

AT THE HEART OF BRAND CONVERSATIONS

Somos internacionales e independientes. Pensamos con libertad para crear y desarrollar estrategias de comunicación para nuestros clientes. Somos líderes en social media entre las agencias europeas de PR según Kantar Media y hemos sido reconocidos como BEST PLACE TO WORK por Scopen. Desde nuestras oficinas de Barcelona, Bogotá, Londres y Madrid, trabajamos para marcas líderes a nivel mundial, como McDonald’s, Google, Mahou, Nike, Novartis, Boehringer o Spotify.

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