We have a bit of an internal hypothesis/running joke at Keywee: if you want to boost a post’s CTR, just mention a Kardashian. The reason? Well, whether you love them, or love to hate them, the Kardashian family has taken over our collective consciousness. Cosmopolitan went so far as to call them “America’s First Family.” And you no longer need to turn on your TV to keep up with the Kardashians, they’ve taken over our News Feeds, Twitters, and Instagrams as well.

Luckily for us, we don’t need to keep speculating about this effect: we have data from over 500 publishers worldwide that can help us better understand the Kardashian impact.

To start, we looked at Facebook posts from 2017 that mentioned one of the Kardashians by name in either the article title or the Facebook post itself. For those of you who have been actively avoiding learning about the Kardashians, that list included:

  • Kim Kardashian
  • Khloe Kardashian
  • Kourtney Kardashian
  • Rob Kardashian
  • Kris Jenner
  • Caitlyn Jenner
  • Kylie Jenner
  • Kendall Jenner

While posts mentioning one of these fine folks made up less than a half of a percent of all posts in 2017, they accounted for 1% of all impressions, and 2% of all clicks. In short? These posts are getting further reach than the average post and on top of that, seeing higher engagement.

Our data shows that posts with a Kardashian see an average CTR that is more than double the overall average CTR in 2017, allowing publishers to pay CPCs that are on average half the cost.

Posts that mentioned a Kardashian by name saw an average CTR that is more than double the 2017 average.

Once we found those results (and some team members owed others $10), we had another question: does this happen for all Kardashians equally?

To start, we looked at the frequency of posts per person.

Kim and Kylie clearly take the lead here, making up more than half the posts about the family (with some posts mentioning both of them of course). They are not-so-closely trailed by Kendall.

These are arguably the three most famous Kardashians, and definitely the three most active on social media themselves. Each of the three has a large interest-base on Facebook – Kim with about 50 million, Kylie with about 40 million, and Kendall with about 30 million.

So they arguably have the most reach in the family (the rest of the family ranges from 1.5 million to about 25 million people with an interest in them). But we wondered how that related to engagement.

The highest CTR we saw in the family was from a Kylie post.

However, despite having some of the highest CTRs, she also had the largest range of CTRs in the family, making her posts less reliable. Kim on the other hand has a much smaller range of CTRs, making her a surer bet than Kylie. Perhaps that’s why she’s still in the lead for number of posts.

Meanwhile, Kourtney, surprised us. She had the highest median CTR and also a reasonably-sized range of results. Her posts, while few in number, do reliably well.

While we found these numbers fascinating, they shouldn’t change your usual publication strategy. If you’re a hard news site, posts about the Kardashians may perform well, but may not bring in exactly the audiences you’re looking for.

Instead, you should focus on finding the right posts to engage with your core audience, and following post best practices to boost click-through (and engagement) in a way that’s more natural for your brand voice.

Want help finding the posts that perform best for your content? Request a Keywee demo.