Over the last few decades, social media has grown astronomically, evolving from a modern way to keep up with your family and friends into a legitimate opportunity to brand yourself.
Professional athletes have arguably been some of the biggest beneficiaries of this development due to the platform they naturally have.
Superstars tend to have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers, which can then lead to a plethora of opportunities to make a significant amount of money off the field.
Look at Will Levis, for example: he has yet to play a down in the NFL, yet he already has an endorsement deal with Hellman’s Mayonnaise, solely due to a viral video posted on social media.
However, it’s a different Titans player — wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins — who was selected to the NFLPA’s “Influencer Hot List” that was compiled with the aid of Zoomph.
Here’s how the list, which includes Twitter/X and Instagram data from September 7, 2022 to July 23rd, 2023, was compiled:
Method: The Influencer Hot List provides an overall ranking of NFL players based on their total social performance score, noted in the “total” column. The social performance scoring is based on their number of organic posts, followers, engagement rate, impressions, and follower interaction rate. The list factors those individual metrics into the final cumulative score. Max score: 125.
Hopkins not only made the list, but he cracked the top 20, coming in at No. 17 with an overall score of 100. Contributing to that score was 141 organic posts, an engagement rate of 6.57 percent, and a whopping 51,135,665 impressions over that span.
The superstar wideout is the only Titans player on the list and narrowly edged out wide receivers Juju Smith-Schuster, DeVonta Smith, and Odell Beckham Jr. to round out the top 20.
In total, DHop was the fifth-highest-ranked wide receiver on this list, trailing only Justin Jefferson, CeeDee Lamb, Deebo Samuel, and Ja’Marr Chase.
Let’s just hope Hopkins can get back to being a top-five pass catcher on the field similarly to the way he’s one off of it in terms of social media.
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