WWE Superstars Harnessing the Power of Social Media
Celebrities have always had to manage their public image, and this may actually be truer for WWE wrestlers than other famous personalities. Whether they are on a heel turn or a face turn, WWE has always been about the hype, and putting on a good show for the fans.
When WWE first joined social media platforms, the messages that were posted were the same generic advertising hype that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. As social media has developed, however, a lot of stars have really come into their own and are using the available platforms in much savvier ways than ever before.
Whether purely to generate kayfabe that can direct or misdirect you as to which wrestler to bet on, taking advantage of a heel turn to say whatever offensive or politically savage thought pops into their head, to increase their own overall fanbase or to raise awareness about the causes they support, WWE fighters are taking what they’ve learnt about social media and running with it.
Making the Move to Media
With huge numbers of followers across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, accompanied by a simultaneous drop in the amount of people actually watching the matches on television, upping their social media game is a savvy business move for professional wrestlers.
From public feuds with other fighters to replying to or even trolling their fans, interactive media is essential to staying connected to the public eye and comes with added perks and benefits too.
We’ve rounded up a few of the savviest social media users among the WWE wrestlers for you here. This should give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on if, for some reason, you haven’t seen them on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms yourself.
Randy Orton
More than 13 million Facebook users and 4.5 Twitter followers can’t be wrong, right? If you’re talking about third-generation wrestling royalty like Randy Orton, they probably can’t. While Orton is not the most active wrestler on social media, his legions of fans lap up everything he posts, from responding to fans to promoting his shows and even expressing his opinions on war veterans.
The Young Bucks
If anyone out there has mastered the art of the heel game more than this tag team has, we haven’t found them yet. Matt and Nick Jackson do their own thing, whatever WWE conventions on a subject happen to be, and are proud to answer back to anyone who calls them out. They’ve even been known to tell people that they peed in WWE’s talent pool, built their own and then filled it with money! They have just over 60,000 Facebook followers, but their brand of acid humour is growing the numbers exponentially.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
A multimedia superstar according to whatever definition you want to use, The Rock offers a huge amount of very diverse content and it’s all infused with his unique charisma. His 56 million followers are kept up to date on his television show The Ballers, his YouTube challenge series, movies, talk shows and even an app that can help get you in shape.
John Cena
One thing any successful social media personality knows is that you have to be consistent, and post on a daily basis. Cena communicates with his 42 million followers on a daily basis. His interactive posts keep people informed about his latest events, invite them to participate in polls and give him a way to share his world views via video. It works perfectly, and Cena is as iconic today as he was in the days before social media.
With social media growing in popularity all the time we are sure to see even more wrestlers join in the fun, and in the future, the war of words may become as intense as the battle in the ring.
