Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand during the national anthem, and the message he has drawn attention to, has resulted in a huge spike in the jersey sales of the San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback. But it has also resulted in more people following him and talking about his actions.
Before Kaepernick first sat during the national anthem for a preseason game on Aug. 26, he was picking up roughly 50 followers a day on his social media handles on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Since then, his daily following has jumped an astounding 35,394 percent. Social media tracking company Hookit says that, in the past two weeks, Kaepernick has been pulling in an average of 17,797 new followers a day on social media.
From Jan. 1 to Aug. 25, Kaepernick gained 40,372 followers on Twitter. In the past two weeks alone, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 8, Hookit data shows Kaepernick added 98,730 Twitter followers.
People are also more interested in what Kaepernick is saying. Since Aug. 26, he has had seven unique social media posts. Those posts have been liked, commented or shared an average of 46,553 times per post. That's almost four times more interaction than Kaepernick posts had before he took his stand by sitting.
In the past two weeks, "Kaepernick" was either tagged or mentioned on social platforms 235,549 times, that's 10 times more than the mentions he received from Jan. 1 to Aug. 25, according to Hookit.
Kaepernick agreed to donate $1 million to community organizations that help the social injustice he is trying to draw attention to. Kaepernick also announced on social media this week that he would donate the royalties from sales of his jersey, which rose to the best-selling jersey in the NFL, to the same causes. On Thursday, the 49ers announced that they too would donate $1 million.