This week’s question will have probably led to one of two reactions. Either the mere mention of Bonnie Blue could have made you pay attention. Or you could have said, “Who is Bonnie Blue?”
For those who do not know, Bonnie Blue (real name, Tia Billinger) is featured in a Channel 4 documentary about her live-streamed event where she had sex with 1,057 men in just 12 hours. And if you are not quick with maths, that means one every 41 seconds or so.
The documentary itself has sparked a reported 160 complaints to the regulator, OFCOM. It has also led to widespread media coverage. And guess what? Bonnie Blue is laughing all the way to the bank. The British 26-year-old is currently earning around £2m per month by having sex with hundreds of men in live-streamed events. She told LBC this week that her goal is to increase this to £5m a month. She is not asking the men who have sex with her to pay anything. They get their 41 seconds of interaction for nothing. The payment is made by her adoring followers, firstly on OnlyFans and then on Fansly, who subscribe to get a glimpse of her.
Tia has said in several interviews that she is doing what she enjoys and that it is much better than the tedious recruitment job she used to have. Plus, she now earns more in a day than she did in a year in that old job. However, she also points out that her dozens of social media posts each day are nothing more than “clickbait”. She has mastered the art and science of using social media to promote her business. You may not like her business. You may be very concerned about her health. You may worry about the potential for exploitation. However, you cannot deny the fact that her social media activity leads to people taking action and becoming subscribers. There is a clear pathway – which she is open about – that connects her social media output to her financial input.
The London-based newspaper for the financial sector, City AM, has even written about this. It points out that she has mastered the world of modern media, saying that Tia manages to “create viral moments, lean unapologetically into controversy and monetise every click”.
Of course, Tia is not the first to have done this. Remember the billionaire Kim Kardashian? She started with a sex tape and has since mastered social media to make her fortune. The Kardashians have shown that in the attention economy, high-frequency posting and carefully crafted controversy beat sporadic ‘beige’ brand posts.
Meanwhile, I see businesses posting on social media infrequently, with boring posts that attract just a few likes from their friends. These businesses pat themselves on the back and pronounce the growth in their following from almost nothing to slightly more than nothing. It’s a tale of two worlds.
Bonnie Blue has understood something that many businesses appear to have failed to grasp. You need to do a lot, and I mean a lot, of social media activity every day to attract an audience. Occasional posts do not have much of an impact, if at all. Plus, Bonnie/Tia has learned that those social media posts need to make people sit up and listen.
Take a stroll around the social media accounts of most businesses, and you’ll fall asleep quickly. Could it be that companies are being advised in ways that make them produce “beige”? A recent study, for instance, claimed that posting repetitive content turned people off. Bonnie Blue’s experience suggests the complete opposite, in more ways than one.
However, dig down into the details of that study, and it says this: “Brands don’t run social media. People do. From social justice movements to major sporting events—discover the things marketers should never post about… and where branded content is actually welcome.”
In other words, social media is social. Well, there’s a surprise. All the time your business posts about your business, it turns people away from you. Transform your social media activity into interesting things about people, things that make others sit up and take notice, and your business will benefit. That’s the evidence from Bonnie Blue, Kim Kardashian and others.
I am not suggesting that you get your kit off and live-stream yourself naked. Instead, the lesson that Bonnie Blue provides is that social media can have significant benefits for business, just so long as you make it socially interesting.
The business that Bonnie Blue runs makes it clear that, several times daily, multi-format posts are the foundation. Her posts have hooks, such as a countdown or being “exclusive”. She adds in a clear pathway to the monetisation too. Park the morality for a moment; the business lesson from Bonnie Blue is about a regular rhythm to your social media activity, providing clear hooks and a clean conversion path.