Simon Blog Post #4

One of my idols since I was a little kid has been Shaun White. Shaun White is a 3-time Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding, but also has talents in skateboarding and music. He has a strong social media following consisting of 1.4 million followers on Instagram, 1.7 million followers on Twitter and 2.3 million likes on his Facebook page. Although he has so much of a following on social media, it seems that this following comes more from his status than from his actual social media. Sure, he makes posts and lets people know what he is doing, but as far as interaction with fans and others he is pretty quiet.

            He is very visible on social media and easy to find. When you type in Shaun White, he is the first one to pop up with the blue check next to his name telling you that he is verified. On instagram when you open his page it tells you he has 465 posts, 1.4M followers and is following 174 people. So needless to say, he has pretty good ratio. His profile picture is a black and white picture of him holding a skateboard standing in front of a road and some mountains. In his bio it says “3 Time Olympic Gold medalist” “Snowboarder | Skateboarder | Musician” “Owner of @airandstyle”. 

Next, we look at his feed and the first thing I noticed is a lot of pictures of himself. This is not a bad thing, but definitely sets a tone for his page and lets you know a little more about him and what he represents. He is a pretty boy, a snowboarder, and a world traveler. He posts pictures of him on exotic beaches, hanging out with penguins, and in cool mountain landscapes. His most recent post however is a video with his mom that he is posting for international women’s day, which is a good thing for a celebrity to post to get extra like and popularity among the female community and others who celebrate international women’s day. Also, if you go two posts back on his Instagram, he has a picture of him with a heart monitor on his chest.

 His caption describes a condition he has called Tetralogy of Fallot and urges people to get consistent check ups and to be aware. Both of these posts are examples of clicktivism and Shaun White attempting to use his platform to raise awareness for a cause. Of course, scattered among his selfies and social media activism are videos of his snowboarding tricks with simple captions like “Nothing quite like it” or “Morning Stretch”. He has a consistent feed and posts about every 2 days with pictures of himself or videos of his snowboarding. He also often will post with no caption; just pictures of him doing something cool or in a cool place with no caption. His Instagram seems to contain what people would want to see from him without trying too hard or giving too much effort. The one way that I see fan interaction on his page though is on his Instagram story. On his Instagram story he will repost pictures and videos of his fans snowboarding that he is tagged in. This is a good yet minimal way to keep up fan interaction.

            His twitter seems to be much the same. He has a lot of the same pictures and messages here and some other similar ones. He does not really have any retweets or replies to anyone on twitter so there isn’t much fan interaction going on here. On twitter although, he somehow has even more followers (1.7M) and is following even less people (50). His twitter bio says “Snowboarder/ Skateboarder Owner of @airandstyle Instagram: @shaunwhite”. So, here his bio is a lot simpler than that of his Instagram, but he also includes his Instagram handle so people can follow it. 

When I looked at his likes on twitter it was mostly either people responding to his tweets or other famous people like Tony Hawk. There is not as much to analyze here as he has much of the same content from his Instagram and has much of the same vibe between the two. One of the biggest differences is how he interacts with fans. On Instagram he mostly does it through his story and on twitter through his likes.

          

          Finally, his Facebook is the easiest to analyze. All of his Facebook posts are the same ones from Instagram. 

I am sure he just uses the feature that allows him to post his Instagram posts straight to Facebook as well. There isn’t really any other content and I am sure he does not participate in much interactions with fans here. Between all of his social media he keeps a very similar tone and personality, which could be considered a good thing.

            Although Shaun White has good social media presence and consistently posts while continuing a similar tone, he could benefit from a little bit of code switching between social medias in order to target his audiences better. He also would be able to benefit from a lot more interaction with fans. Most celebrities/ companies that interact with people on social media do so through Twitter so this would be a good place for him to start. If he were to reply to some tweets or participate in conversations happening on twitter his social media presence would undoubtedly increase. He does a good job of posting a good balance without posting too much and making his captions short and simple, yet he can talk about serious things when he wants to and that is something people like to see. In conclusion, Shaun White doesn’t seem to put too much effort into his social media and posts every couple days just to keep his following. He relies more on his status, his talent and his good looks in order to keep people interested. This vibe that he gives off through his social media does represent his personality well though which is the best part about it. Also for fun, here is my favorite Shaun White video: