Ellen DeGeneres: talk show host, activist, and digital content creator
Ellen DeGeneres is a talk show host, comedian, actress, writer, producer, and activist. As a popular daytime talk show host of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Ellen DeGeneres has been inspiring and bringing joy to audiences from all over the world for years. Since beginning her show in 2003, Ellen has made use of social media and digital content platforms to further expand her brand. She is ranked as the number one creator of digital content online, with more than 1.1 billion total cross platform views (The Oracles, 2017). Ellen’s most used platforms include her own website, Facebook page, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, and her own digital network called EllenTube. Ellen also makes use of other platforms including Pinterest and Periscope. She has more than 150 million followers across these social media profiles and is the most followed TV personality on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, reaching and engaging with an incredible number of fans (The Oracles, 2017). She has over 27 million likes on Facebook, 43 million followers on Instagram, and 66 million followers on Twitter.
Ellen’s YouTube channel prominently features content from her talk show, such as guest interviews, musical performances, and games and contests, but also features videos of inspiring people, heart-warming stories, and funny fan videos. Her YouTube channel averages more than 300 million views per month and has over 19 million subscribers (The Oracles, 2017). Ellen also makes use of Snapchat, mostly during live tapings of her show. Most often, a device with Snapchat is set up backstage for her guests to access to record videos and photos, usually saying hi to Ellen’s Snapchat followers. Followers also regularly see ‘Snapchat take-overs,’ where celebrities take viewers through their experience on the show, mostly backstage. Ellen’s Snapchat averages an impressive number of about 1 million views per day. Other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are used to show content from The Ellen Show, promote her own products and the products of other brands, and to raise awareness about issues that are close to her heart, such as LGBTQ rights and anti-bullying efforts. She also makes use of hashtags in many of her posts, encouraging online users to join in on the conversation. The posts that personally resonate with me are her hilarious #TBT pictures, in which she photoshops herself in popular movie posters, musical groups and album covers, or more current posts that are trending on social media (ie. Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement photo).
Ellen also makes great use of the platform FourSquare, by allowing fans who are attending a live taping of her show to “check in” and receive discounts at The Ellen Shop.
In 2016, Ellen launched her own digital network called EllenTube, a one-stop online destination for everything Ellen.
EllenTube features a wider range of content than her YouTube account, including many of the same videos but also featuring fan photos and photos from her show, episode clips, contest giveaways, and a ‘send to Ellen’ link which allows fans to upload pictures, videos, and stories to the featured categories. There are also links to purchase her products from the Ellen Shop, a clothing and accessories line, and from Ed By Ellen, her newest line which includes home furnishings and décor, pet products, women’s apparel, footwear, and accessories.
Other original programs on EllenTube include a Damn, Daniel series for Snapchat, Ellen’s Pet Dish, an animated series featuring her pets, the return of the 4-year old period table of elements expert and viral sensation, Brielle, who often appeared on the talk show, Dance Challenge, a reality-competition show featuring child dancers, #MadeByYou, featuring the best user-generated content, including stunt, baby, and cat videos, and the Epic or Fail series also featured on her daytime show in which viewers can guess if the outcome of stunt in a user-generated video will end well or not. The aim of Ellen’s digital network initiative was “to create a robust, premium cross-platform advertising and integration opportunity for brands to associate with the compelling and engaging original content Ellen produces and distributes, in a positive, high-quality environment” (Buckman, 2016).
Other digital content products created by Ellen and her team include apps like Emoji Exploji, a collection of customized, fun and hilarious emoji’s unique to Ellen, games like Heads Up! and Hot Hands, and her own app called Ellen, which features the latest news surrounding her and The Ellen Show.
And who could forget the Oscar selfie? Ellen hosted the 2014 Academy Awards and snagged a selfie with celebrities, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, and more. Ellen announced that she wanted it to be the most retweeted photo of all time and it achieved that in just one hour. Later that year, the post made Twitter’s list of most-tweeted entertainment moments with nearly 255,000 tweets per minute (Jarvey, 2014).
What makes social media users so engaged with Ellen’s content?
- Her powerful and uplifting posts. Ellen taps into audiences’ emotions — whether she’s making them laugh or making them cry, she makes her viewers feel something.
- Knowing and understanding her audience — she has learned and understood what kind of content her audience wants to see and what will resonate with them.
- Both humorous and inspiring share-worthy content — Ellen’s posts are constantly being shared from one user to another online, which in turn, gets more users to interact with the content, liking and sharing it.
- Working with popular celebrities. Although working as a talk show host requires her to work with celebrities every day, she regularly posts content of these celebrities on her social. This probably makes many users more likely to follow her, as they want to keep up with these celebs interviews and other exclusive content.
- Planned content and consistency across all platforms — ensuring that her images and videos are the same across all platforms helps to better build Ellen’s brand and her online image overall.
- A highly active profile — Ellen posts on social or updates news on her website or on EllenTube every single day. On average she posts 4–5 times per day on platforms like Instagram and Twitter, keeping audiences engaged with her content.
- Cross promotion of her social presence on all social media accounts — this helps to attract new followers and lets her current followers know where else on social media they can find her, turning Twitter followers into Facebook fans, Facebook fans into Instagram followers, and so on. Ellen does this by adding links to her social platforms on her website and in the bio or description sections of other platforms, and by promoting her social during her The Ellen Show.
Through an extensive use of a number of digital platforms, Ellen seems to accomplish many goals. She encourages both current and potential viewers to tune in to The Ellen Show and/or view her content on YouTube or EllenTube. She engages and connects with her audiences on social media through contests, give-aways, user-generated content, and call-to-action events. She provides entertainment for all, no longer just on television but through uploading clips and funny content to these various platforms, which in turn, has increased her revenue streams. Ellen also often promotes other brands, like Kohl’s, Target, and American Airlines, through give-aways on her talk show. Another important goal is her ability to bring important issues to her audience’s attention and to raise awareness. For example, Ellen is passionate about and has actively posted about gay and lesbian rights, women’s rights, disadvantaged children, animal rights, and anti-bullying efforts. She also shares inspiring, every day stories about courage and kindness. For example, on March 13th, Ellen shared a story of two educators from Brooklyn, NY who helped 90% of high school seniors attend college in a community where usually only 4% attend.
In my opinion, Ellen DeGeneres is killing the social media game. But if there was any one thing she could improve on, I think it would be to better interact with audiences on social media. Although she does often connect with her audience through sharing user-generated content and inviting inspiration people on her show, she could take interaction with audiences one step further, for example, by responding to fans’ tweets or comments or commenting on others’ posts. I know that this isn’t a celeb-like thing to do, but as someone who is trying to build a brand and sell products, it could help.
As the digital world has grown, Ellen has grown along with it to become a social media powerhouse. Being effective on social media comes down to a strong understanding of branding (Khan, 2017). Ellen’s strong understanding of branding is shown through her posting unique, crafted, and high quality content which works to build her value as a TV personality, activist, and digital content creator. Ellen holds a high level of connectivity with her fans and other online users through sharing user-generated content and other relatable, inspiring and/or emotional content and this authenticity reaches more than 150 million followers per day. Ellen has built a community around her brand and actively involves that community. Overall, I think that Ellen DeGeneres’ digital media strategy has been extremely effective and she has ultimately succeeded in making sure that her digital media presence is something worth following.
References:
Buckman, A. (2016). Ellen DeGeneres Dives into Digital with Original Content Network. Retrieved from https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/275165/ellen-degeneres-dives-into-digital-with-original-c.html
Jarvey, N. (2014). Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar Selfie Tops the Year on Twitter. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ellen-degeneres-oscar-selfie-tops-757364
Khan, H. (2017). The Power of Story Telling: Course Introduction. [PowerPoint Slides].
The Oracles. (2017). The Top 9 Social Media Strategists to Watch in 2017. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/287622
