Floyd Mayweather is a Genius at Social Media and He Doesn’t Even Know It

[caption id="attachment_3052" align="alignleft" width="196"] Floyd Mayweather and Maria Sharapova. Photo credit: ifindkarma / Foter / CC BY[/caption]

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is Everywhere

Like his right hook, it’s futile to try to avoid it; Floyd Mayweather Jr. is everywhere. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, or the blogosphere, it is seemingly impossible to scroll through your feed without seeing some snippet that mentions this asshat. Normally, a celebrity blowing up social media is not something worth mentioning. In fact – all irony aside – I actively avoid mentioning it because it is degrading and banal. This case is, however, different.

“Why am I seeing this?”

What immediately caught my attention is, “Why am I seeing this?” As a city-dwelling, hipster-nerd who works with computers, my newsfeed doesn’t exactly show last night’s box scores or the winner the NBA Championship. Instead, my feeds are generally comprised of celebrity SEO articles, illiterate friends posting links to literary magazines, and music blogs. I am living in a “social media bubble.” So why was I seeing this? The answer is that Floyd Mayweather is an unparalleled genius at social media. In his latest feud with 50 Cent, he is reaching out to multiple audiences. Mayweather is a professional athlete and 50 Cent is a rapper. Instead of just appealing to sports fans, he is now relevant to fans of music news. These are two huge demographics that tweet, share, and blog incessantly about their subjects. Talk about link building. This feud then spread into the viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Frenzy and created more social buzz and before that, he chose to wear an outrageous, (but very cool), pre-match costume that was reported on in hipster fashion rags. The list goes on, but it’s important to think about what we, as Internet marketers, can learn from this.

1. Follow trends on the Internet and post about them. Even if it’s not something that is immediately relevant, it can be a boon to continued traffic. [See current post]
2. What does your client do that could be relevant to a larger audience? How can you cross genres? This doesn’t have to be rocket science. I generally work in B2B and there are plenty of ways to reach an audience outside their core business. Will it score them tons of new clients? Probably not, but it will build links, increase traffic, and potentially reach a couple potential clients.
3. Try to build relationships with the customers and companies that a client works with outside of their core business and leverage that relationship to build relationships with what could become new clients.

Stamina Stamina STAMINA

The next thing that caught my attention was the duration of Mayweather’s relevance. The more I thought about this, the more I realized how long he has been popping into my feeds – and with increasing frequency. Most social celebrities are flashes in the pan, but I’ve been seeing Mayweather pop into my feed for months, (years!?), on end. The proof on this, my friends, is in the proverbial pudding. Look at Mayweather’s Google Trend Graph:                 By Comparison Lindsay Lohan Barack Obama Obviously there are Y-Axis discrepancies between these charts, but still, which graph would you want to show your client? While there are less actionable takeaways from this latter observation, one thing to keep in mind that it takes a long time. In the above examples, we are looking at the trend lines for 4+ years, not a week, not a month. It takes time. Remember that before you get frustrated.

Some Less Obvious Things We Can Learn From This:

1. If people are interested in something, keep talking about it. I don’t care that you’ve posted about it 15 times. Post about it again. Much has been written about Mayweather’s ongoing disagreements with eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao – so much that you’d think people would get tired of hearing about it. However, there is widespread interest in seeing Mayweather and Pacquiao fight and in the drama surrounding it, so bloggers and journalists keep writing about it, and readers keep reading about it. The lesson here: don’t be afraid to beat a dead horse.
2. Being social media-famous for a spell does not guarantee continued success. Instead, be like Floyd and build on past coups to reach an even larger audience.