Kanye West: Twitter Marketing
Influential, talented, genius. These are a few descriptions Kanye West might give to himself. “I am God” he proclaims in his 2013 release, Yeezus. In several songs he likens himself to innovators like Michael Jackson and Albert Einstein, saying of himself, “the only rapper compared to Michael" or “this generation's closest thing to Einstein”.
Kanye maintains this persona and brand by using social media, specifically Twitter. Kanye uses Twitter in three main ways: interacting with other celebrities and brands, promoting his own brands and endeavors, and issuing thoughtful and provocative rants.
Self Promotion
West’s use of Twitter to promote his own music and brand prove that he is not only a great artist, but a great businessman. Kanye’s brand and music related tweets can be summarized with one word: hype. Kanye builds hype in an untraditional way by keeping his followers on their toes. As an example, following the release of his latest album, The Life of Pablo, West unveiled a series of limited-time pop-up merch shops in several cities. But instead of announcing these shops in advance, Kanye would use Twitter to announce them hours before hand. Because of this, fans knew these shops existed, but they never knew when it would come to their city.
As a result, when Kanye announced each city, a mad rush of fans ensued to arrive at these shops. Like these merch shops, Kanye uses Twitter to sporadically announce news about the rest of his products.
Colleague Promotion
In addition to using Twitter to promote his own brand, Kanye posts a large amount of tweets which promote artists he admires and products he enjoys. By tweeting at others in a positive way, not only does Kanye boost the growth of smaller brands and artists, he also boosts his own credibility as a businessman. Rather than remaining completely self absorbed like he can seem to be if his music is the sole basis of judgment, Kanye proves that he has a heart when he posts positive selfless words. In effect, he uses Twitter in this way to counter the reputation given to him by media and tabloids.
Provocative Rants
Kanye rants about radio’s low play time of Frank Ocean’s latest album.
Finally, Kanye promotes his own persona by using Twitter as a platform for thoughtful and often provocative rants. This is where the question “is Kanye insane or genius?” comes to mind. This tweet style can best be described as a stream of consciousness. In a typical rant, usually several tweets long, Kanye will complain about something and then either ask his audience for a solution or pose one himself. Often times it’s difficult to understand exactly what he means. Other times it will be something incredibly profound that attests to his brilliance.
Regardless, his ranting encourages a mysterious aura that makes his followers speculate about Kanye’s genius or lack there of. And I think this is exactly what he wants to achieve. That is his brand. His hope is not to be seen as simply intelligent, and certainly not insane, but some kind of mad genius. In fact, many of his songs proclaim the beauty of the misunderstood genius. As he raps in “Saint Pablo”, “name one genius who ain’t crazy”. So Kanye continues to tweet his thoughts and successfully utilizes Twitter to paint an image of a crazed yet brilliant artist.
