Chrissy Teigen: One of the Greatest Social Media Influencers
For anyone that doesn’t know who Chrissy Teigen is, she’s a supermodel, best-selling cookbook author, TV host, and of course John Legend’s wife. She has a big following on social media not just because of who she is, but because her social media accounts are gold. Unlike most celebrities, Chrissy Teigen is unfiltered and will say anything that comes to her mind. She is also very open and doesn’t shy away from subjects, making her very relatable and real. Her presence on social media makes everyone feel like she’s just like the rest of us. Due to all of this, TIME named Chrissy as one of the top 25 most influential people on the internet. There are also plenty of websites that say that you should follow Chrissy Teigen on social media. So let’s analyze Chrissy Teigen’s social media to see what she does that makes her remarkable.
Chrissy Teigen is most definitely an influencer. She has access to a large audience and is able to persuade others by her authenticity and reach. What makes her an even better and more successful influencer is that she fits all three of the three largest influencer markets; food, lifestyle, and parenting. For food, Chrissy has a best-selling cookbook called Cravings: Recipes for All the Food You Want to Eat and she’s also constantly posting videos and pictures of food. Lifestyle influencers are seen as as real people first, and celebrities as second. People are always commenting about how real and relatable Chrissy is and that’s why they enjoy following her because she doesn’t come off as a “celebrity,” instead she’s seen as one of us. As for parenting, Chrissy and John Legend recently had their first child and are expecting their second. After the birth of their first daughter, Chrissy has been very candid about motherhood and has been very open with her struggles with postpartum depression, as well as fighting back against mom shaming.
Chrissy also fits six of the seven characteristics of an influencer.
1. She has a level of connectivity, as mentioned above, she is seen as real and relatable which makes people connect with her.
2. She has direct access to followers. Especially on Twitter, she is always replying and interacting with fans, not just as a “celebrity,” but having genuine conversations with them, as if they’re friends.
3. She posts photos that are seen as “the truth.” Most of her pictures on Instagram consist of her, her daughter, and John Legend being cute and happy, making people want them as “family goals.”
4. Her interpersonal nature of new photo and video sharing networks consist of her being very active on Snapchat and Instagram, especially their stories and the live option.
5. Chrissy has an affiliative bond with her followers since they feel like they know her so they’re more likely to be influenced by her.
6. Chrissy is definitely part of the leisure class. Even though she is seen as “all of us,” her leisure class life can still be seen on her social media. For example, her pictures of her at the Grammy’s, as well as pictures with other celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
7. The only characteristic Chrissy doesn’t really fit is the visual co-presence. Most of her pictures are directly of her or her family and don’t have the “you can be here with me” feeling.
Another aspect that makes Chrissy Teigen notable in social media is her power of memes. She is pretty much a walking meme. Pretty much all her social media activity, especially her Twitter, can be turned into a meme. Her tweets and her replies are so great that they often get spread around and shared all over social media. Some examples of these can be been in this BuzzFeed article — https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephanieanderson/chrissy-teigen-is-the-realest?utm_term=.ic2MKPoEp#.hy0zg0w1j. There have been a couple moments where her facial expressions were so great that they became memes. The most popular one is of her crying face at the Golden Globes. It became viral right away and a bunch of different captions were created for the meme. Once again, BuzzFeed has a compilation of these memes in this article — https://www.buzzfeed.com/candacelowry/chrissy-teigens-cry-face-was-the-greatest-thing-to-happen-to?utm_term=.xlnrQEaJp#.rpQ97YLkZ. Two other memes of Chrissy Teigen that went viral happen to have came from one night, the Oscars. Those memes are of Chrissy sleeping during an acceptance speech, and the other is of her cringe face. Most of Chrissy’s memes are macro memes, but she also has some photo, video, and word memes. It seems like no matter what Chrissy does, it will all turn into a meme.
On top of Chrissy Teigen being an influencer and a great subject for memes, she’s also an activist. She is very outspoken about the causes that she supports and shows continuous support. One cause that she’s always spoken about is Planned Parenthood. After the shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, Chrissy tweeted “every time shit like this happens, John and I immediately make another donation to planned parenthood.” Planned Parenthood isn’t the only cause Chrissy has supported and donated money to. After the Parkland shooting, her and her husband donated $25,000 to the March for Our Lives movement. Another noteworthy event that happened was a part of the #MeToo movement. When Olympian McKayla Maroney spoke up about the sexual abuse she suffered by the Team USA doctor, it was revealed that she might be fined $100,000 if she speaks at the sentencing. Immediately after this was announced, Chrissy Teigen offered to pay the sum. Therefore, instead of Chrissy being a slacktivist, she is an activist since she actually acts upon the causes she cares about.
Chrissy Teigen has also slightly talked about the dark side of social media. Being an influencer and having so many followers also has its downside. She also showed that we are not the only people that have to deal with the dark side of social media. In 2016, Chrissy tweeted that she made her Twitter account private. When asked about it she said, “not strong enough anymore,” and then went on to say “it’s not haters or trolls or generally mean people. I just feel like I’m absorbing bad shit 24/7. My body and mind cannot handle it anymore.” This shows the toll social media can have on a person, even if they have thousands or millions of supporters.
Lastly, Chrissy’s impressions and engagements are other factors that show her remarkable social media presence. She has a big following on Instagram and Twitter. On Instagram she has 16.7 million followers and on Twitter she has 10.2 million followers. Therefore, combined she has almost 30 million audience members interested in her life. Sure, that is a very impressive amount but the engagement on her social media is even more important. On average, her pictures on Instagram receive at least 500,000 likes, which is a very good number of engagements, with many of her posts reaching the 1 million mark. Her tweets also receive thousands of engagements with many of them getting shared by others because of their humour.
Recently, Chrissy tweeted that she will stop using Snapchat due to the update, people not being able to find her, and the Rihanna poll that made light of domestic violence. Her tweet received 89,000 likes, 7,000 retweets, and 7,000 comments, with most of them supporting her move. A lot of her supporters also jumped on the bandwagon and said that they will be leaving Snapchat too. This shows Chrissy’s impact and her high rate of impressions and engagements.
In conclusion, I agree with TIME’s naming Chrissy Teigen as one of the top 25 most influential people on the internet. I personally follow her on both Instagram and Twitter and am constantly enjoying the content she puts out and I always know that it will be good. Just as mentioned above, people connect with her because of her realness and being relatable which is also why I am a fan of hers. The reasons why I chose to critically analyze Chrissy Teigen’s social media is because she does many right things that make her a notable social media personality. She is an influencer that fits the three largest influencer markets, and she also has six of the seven influencer characteristics. She is also a walking meme, where anything that she does or says can be made into a meme and goes viral. She is also a great activist that doesn’t only say words to support causes, but actually acts on them to make a difference. She has also capitalized on her relatable title by speaking about the dark side of social media, letting us know that celebrities and influencers also face the same problems. The success of her social media presence can be seen by the number of impressions and engagements she receives on both Twitter and Instagram. If there is one influencer that I think is worthy of being talked about and analyzed in a social media course, I definitely think Chrissy Teigen would be a great choice of a person who is doing it right.
