Celebrities have always been concerned with image, especially the image that the public gets to see. With the advent of social media, celebs are using new methods to put themselves out there and many are having great success.

Indie It-Girl Zooey Deschanel created a website called HelloGiggles, which perfectly embodies the cute-girl hipster lifestyle for which she has become the mascot. Her site is the latest example of celebrity-led, socially-driven media properties and marketers are beginning to take notice.

Celebrities, who are typically more visible in digital media through Facebook and Twitter, enjoy extremely devoted fanbases. According to a recent article "Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber have more than 20 million followers and 18 million followers on Twitter, respectively, and more than double those numbers on Facebook."

Leveraging the presence of stars on Facebook and Twitter hasn't always proved successful for advertisers, but owning media properties is giving celebs a new way to capitalize on their personas.

With a sharply-defined niche audience, HelloGiggles, had almost 400,000 U.S. unique visitors in January. Stats for this group shows it is 75% female and 80% between the ages of 18-34 (via ComScore).

"But unlike, say, Oprah or Martha Stewart's publishing empires, these newest endeavors are driven by those communities, not professionally produced content. Most of HelloGiggles content is user-generated," said co-founder and producer Sophia Rossi.

Lady Gaga, who has the most-followed account on Twitter, now also has her own social network. A startup she's invested in, Backplane, is building technology for niche communities, and her LittleMonsters.com is the first. Her site, in beta with public launch planned for spring, gives Gaga fans profile pages where they can discuss tidbits such as when they first saw her in concert, a Pinterest-like venue to share photos and videos, and their own @littlemonsters.com email addresses.

While celebrity driven communities might not experience the same numbers as Facebook or Twitter, the idea of engaging devotees is still something advertisers have taken notice of. Lady Gaga has connected with brands such as HP, Wonder Bread and Diet Coke in past endeavors, so similar advertisers on her social network are a definite possibility.

Gwyneth Paltrow has a ladies' lifestyle site, Goop, which has even gotten into the business of selling content with recently launched mobile-app city guides for $3.99 a pop.

All these different celeb-driven sites touch on the idea that if Twitter or Facebook were to go away (horror!), where would all the followers go? Driving fans/followers back to your own site where you own content lives is the strategy. Of course this is just smart social media. Content is king but we've always heard the importance of "location, location, location."

Are you producing content as a means to market your brand? If this is something you'd like some help with or would like to chat about ways to improve your marketing in other areas, we'd love to hear from you!

FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S.