If you were checking out the Forbes annual most powerful celebrities list, you may have noticed an additional ranking criteria – social. Other ranking factors include things like pay, TV/radio rank, press rank and web rank. According to Forbes, the move comes predominantly as a result of the growth of Facebook and Twitter and not necessarily as a result of their wider social footprint.

While this may look a little gimmicky on the surface, there’s actually much more to this than just who’s the most popular on Facebook and Twitter. From a brand perspective, rankings like this could enable you to make smarter decisions when looking to sign-up brand ambassadors for social media campaigns. After all, what’s the point of signing-up the top ranking celebrity from a TV/radio perspective when you’re looking to deploy a social media campaign heavily focused on Twitter.

In addition, we could also start and see social media take on much more significant role within the negotiations between brands and celebrities. For example, the number and frequency of tweets, how branded they are, what type of content is to be shared, will it be purely 1-way, or are there expectations around engagement. Of course, with all these elements there comes a price……if you’re a top 10 social media ranking celebrity, that price suddenly becomes easier for you to negotiate.