Halloween has recently passed and it’s a good transition into this week’s analysis;
Let’s face it dressing up on Halloween is the first step to cosplaying at your local comic con.
Cosplay can be a lucrative business if done correct, and many people do. As you read through this week’s analysis I urge you respect and treat cosplayers as you would any other professional. It that’s a lot of hard-work and dedication to master their craft as they have.
A staple at any comic con is the Cosplay culture. Fans show their appreciation and passion for beloved characters. Cosplay can also be a lucrative business if you have a strong work ethic, are consistent, and dedicated to your craft.
Get out the hot glue gun and let’s start forming the foam!
I’ve gathered a random selection of Cosplay data from Instagram. The cosplayers ranged from followers of +3 million to below 2K. This alone posed an interesting challenge. How do I normalize and standardize my data to fit into a model?
My solution was to factor in key performance indicators of Instagram success (regardless of being in the realm of cosplay) and implemented an engagement score for each cosplayer (like a customer value score).
To prevent confounding variables (influencers with a direct correlation to each other), I elected to excluded everything which went into the engagement score.
My initial read shows this model is very predictive of the data sample gather from Instagram and the highest influencer with significance is the images of the Cosplayer where they are exposed (think NSFW but tasteful). The amount of hashtags impact was skewed to a correlation of the more followers the less to no hashtags are used.
If you’re a subscriber to this blog and enjoy the Stacks of Stats, you’ll recognize my preference for Q graphs.
There’s a large curl at both tails but most of the data fits well, so there won’t be a need to run a more complex model.
What could be causing these extreme values towards the end of each tail?
While gathering and visualizing my data, I observed an interesting behavior:
The amount of hashtags deviates and almost has no correlation with engagement.
Driving the skew-ness is two factors:
Newer cosplay accounts use fewer hashtags at the beginning
Well established cosplay accounts use little to zero hashtags with their most recent posts.
Our data story isn’t complete and once take the exposed variable to the profiling stage and begin to extrapolate the engagement impact, a telling data story begins to form.
For example, this table read as:
DC comics themed Cosplayers whom also happen to be exposed potentially drive nearly 700 more likes than cosplay images fully clothed.
In the case of what has the highest impact? We can chalk up Nintendo to the champion and most of it is from the Bowsette trend. Potentially driving in a whopping +61K likes.
Interesting enough the runner up from a potential engagement impact standpoint is Scooby-Doo (Velma mostly), and the gap is less than 10K likes.
Does being exposed help all boost all themes of cosplay? There is one theme in this sample where there was a negative relationship; Anime. The possible reason behind this relationship is the niche fan base and attention to detail Anime fans have. i.e. Hard to go as Sailor Moon without the bow.
What have learned from diving into the Cosplay Data?
Being a top cosplayer on Instagram is as delicate as any social media fame. Every post, every composition, every hashtag, every theme… can make or break your brand. Not all cosplay needs to have a level of exposure to be successful, but it is a huge driver in engagement.
A few uses of this analysis are if you’re going to theme as Scooby-Do lean towards Velma and there’s enough out there for comparison.
If you’re looking for a large impact and a fan of video games, take dive at Bowsette (drives in a potential +61K likes).
Finally more hashtags does not mean more likes.
There’s more value in posting a cosplay of character you are passionate about and post relevant hashtags for more organic likes.
After you have consumed this meal, I hope you take these findings and improve your cosplay engagement. Also as always enjoy the featured pancake recipe below!
https://www.inquisitr.com/5035455/the-5-sexiest-female-cosplayers-to-follow-on-instagram/
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