10 Step Investigation: Just How Successful Is WWE In 2017?
5. Social Media Reach & Engagement
WWE's official Twitter account boasts, at time of writing, 9.06M followers - a not inconsiderable number, but one that the company is compelled to artificially bloat, anyway. The company has long since skewed its mathematics to add up every follower of every official linked performer account and pass them off as unique. It doesn't really work like that, but it's just something WWE does.
Does this mammoth follower count - the correct one - matter? Traditional entertainment platforms use social media, ultimately, to steer traffic from there to that traditional platform - but WWE's viewership is down across the spectrum. By that metric, the company's social media presence is ineffective.
There's also the fact that WWE doesn't really get how best to utilise Twitter. Short, hypnotising, short attention-grabbing GIFs - the likes of which propelled Will Ospreay and Ricochet into the international conversation - are conspicuous by their absence. Instead, WWE tends to post one minute videos of match finishes days after they've already been banished from the forefront of people's minds. RAW highlights are posted after SmackDown takes place. By that time, said clips have already been played to death on RAW itself.
No feuds of any note have escalated from or on social media. Kevin Owens has tried to further feuds to entertaining effect; his Twitter jabs at Goldberg were funnier than anything he was told to say on television - but that exception-proving rule indicts WWE's mishandling of its vast potential.