See 2020’s most influential here.

Every year, as the weather gets colder, the Brandwatch React team start to get this strange feeling.

Is it the craving for the warmth of the Christmas fire? The hunger for a hearty Thanksgiving feast? No, it’s our itch to work out which tweeter is the most influential this year.

We’ve created this list (in various forms) for four years now. Here’s how we do it.

Methodology

For this research we used Brandwatch Audiences to search for active tweeters with a high influence score.

Audiences ranks accounts according to a selection of criteria that, added together, create their influence score.

This is our measure of how influential an account is over time, based on the level of genuine engagement they are creating. While lots of followers, retweets and replies will help, the more influential the people they engage with, the better the score.

Let’s get to it.

Brandwatch’s most influential people on Twitter 2019

Here’s the list, ranked according to influencer score:

Brandwatch’s most influential people on Twitter 2019

Ranking Handle Influence Known for
50 @TheRock 93 Actor
49 @nickjonas 93 Musician
48 @Beyonce 93 Musician
47 @DaniloGentili 93 Comedian
46 @LeoDiCaprio 93 Actor
45 @NICKIMINAJ 93 Musician
44 @MariahCarey 93 Musician
43 @AvrilLavigne 93 Musician
42 @ConanOBrien 93 Media personality
41 @sachin_rt 93 Sports
40 @chrisbrown 93 Musician
39 @LiamPayne 93 Musician
38 @Louis_Tomlinson 93 Musician
37 @LilTunechi 93 Musician
36 @KevinHart4real 93 Media personality
35 @Oprah 93 Media personality
34 @BrunoMars 93 Musician
33 @britneyspears 93 Musician
32 @seanhannity 94 Media personality
31 @MacMiller 94 Musician
30 @maddow 94 Media personality
29 @rickygervais 94 Comedian
28 @pewdiepie 94 Media personality
27 @Eminem 94 Musician
26 @HillaryClinton 94 Politician
25 @zaynmalik 94 Musician
24 @kanyewest 94 Musician
23 @Harry_Styles 94 Musician
22 @NiallOfficial 94 Musician
21 @KingJames 94 Sports
20 @MileyCyrus 94 Musician
19 @jimmyfallon 94 Media personality
18 @shakira 94 Musician
17 @selenagomez 94 Musician
16 @jtimberlake 94 Musician
15 @rihanna 94 Musician
14 @justinbieber 94 Musician
13 @BarackObama 94 Politician
12 @JLo 95 Musician
11 @BillGates 95 Business
10 @KimKardashian 95 Media personality
9 @ArianaGrande 95 Musician
8 @TheEllenShow 95 Media personality
7 @ladygaga 95 Musician
6 @Cristiano 95 Sports
5 @elonmusk 96 Business
4 @katyperry 96 Musician
3 @narendramodi 97 Politician
2 @realdonaldtrump 97 Politician
1 @taylorswift13 97 Musician
Source: Brandwatch Audiences
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Learnings

What have we learned from our list?

Influential professions

First of all, musicians seem particularly adept at becoming influential on the platform.

Media personalities, admittedly a broad category, came up second.

We were surprised to see just four politicians on the list. Those that were on the list appeared very highly, though, with Trump, Modi, and Obama appearing in the top 10.

Age, wisdom, and influence

There is a massive range of ages in the list, from Justin Bieber and Harry Styles (both 25 years old) up to 73-year-old President Trump. The average age overall is 41.

For the men in the list, the average age is 42.34. (We didn’t count Mac Miller, who is deceased). For the women in the list, the average age is 40.89. Compared to last year, this is a pretty small difference. In 2018, the female list had an average age of 36.4, nearly 10 years younger than the male average of 44.7.

Summary

Thanks for reading this year’s report on the most influential people on Twitter. Remember, big-name influencers can definitely help with broad brand awareness, but it’s also important to look at the power of micro influencers – the people with smaller but very engaged followings that might be more likely to care about what your brand has to say.