While the subjects of Twitter Tuesday have generally been young, budding stars in the music industry, there will always be a place for music royalty. Sir Paul McCartney has been making music longer than most of today’s Top 20 artists have been alive. With someone of his stature and respect, his Twitter will automatically gain large numbers of followers. With such a following already bound to exist, how will he utilize his Twitter?
Okay, after reading his bio, we have to point out the obvious, Paul isn’t the one typing these tweets. It states “updated by MPL“, which is a licensing and publishing company founded by Paul McCartney. At least he’s not discreetly hiding behind a guise of marketing and public relations personnel. With that in the open, his Twitter is run pretty smoothly. One thing that comes from not directly using your Twitter is not having highly opinionated and controversial tweets posted. Instead, McCartney’s Twitter is filled with promotion, engagement and interaction. McCartney recently released his sixteenth studio album, “New”. Instead of going the traditional route of promoting by relentlessly posting reminders that the album is about to release, McCartney’s Twitter allows fans to interact with the promotion.
As shown in the tweet above, it is clearly relaying the information that his new album is going to be released soon. What it does that transcends one-way promotion is encourage fans to respond. People like to talk about things that they are interested in. As if getting to respond about something you care about isn’t rewarding enough, there are times when incentives such as free concert tickets are thrown into the pot for responding to things such as trivia questions.
McCartney’s Twitter feed may not be run by the elder Beatle himself, but no one can say that it is boring. Followers of his feed are constantly being asked to contribute to the conversation, whether it be a Q&A with McCartney, a trivia question, or just general thoughts about his new album. For the Q&A’s, which began October 3rd of this year, Paul chooses among questions submitted with the hashtag “#AskMacca”. He answered a handful of questions that first day, but since it has slowed to question every day or so.
The responses appear to come from McCartney himself, which breaks any tension that may have accumulated over fans yearning for some actual interaction with the adored musician. Engagement is obviously a huge priority for MLP when it comes to running McCartney’s Twitter. Even plugs such as an article to BuzzFeed that has gifs from his new music video are laced with calls for two-way communication.
It would be easy for the social media staff in charge of running McCartney’s Twitter to just post updates on new albums, interviews, events. McCartney’s music legacy could stand alone without a captivating Twitter feed, but he goes the extra mile. Does he need highly engaging tweets to keep his social standing afloat? Probably not. But the constant interaction between MLP, McCartney himself, and his 1.6 million+ followers surely keeps them coming back for more.
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ryanglaspell 