Pop sensation Lady Gaga has managed to sell 8 million albums since 2008, in a time when no one is buying CDs. How did she do it? By leveraging social media and developing creative partnerships to sell product, albums and singles.

She is the first artist to score four consecutive number one singles from a debut album and the video premiere of her “Bad Romance” video lead to a Universal Music server crash and over 110 million views on YouTube. Not only is Lady Gaga scoring in the singles and album sales department she is also reaping the benefits of creative partnerships. With the success of Lady Gaga’s career, big brands are reaching out to Lady Gaga for her help in selling their products. She has been named creative director for Polaroid in the hopes of reigniting the brand and the Estee Lauder Group is seeing record sales of Lady Gaga’s and Cyndi Lauper’s Mac Viva Glam lipstick.

Lady Gaga boosts 2.8 million Twitter followers and over 5.2 million Facebook fans that are more than eager to hear the latest Gaga news. This army of followers is gaga, well, over Gaga. In the February 22 Ad Age issue, Steve Berman, Universal Music’s president of sales and marketing states in the article “GAGA, OOH LA LA: Why The Lady is the Ultimate Social Climber”, “Gaga has worked tirelessly in keeping up daily if not hourly communications with her fans and growing fanbase through all the technology that exists.”

Her Facebook page features a merchandise store, events calendar, and gift shop of Lady Gaga images to send friends. Her Twitter page is filled with tweets which encourage users to watch videos and tweet with the singer. “Check me out on the Today Show with Cyndi” and “Any scousers gotta video if “the living dress” so happy I could die? Tweet me!” However, for someone not down with the lingo (as in me), more than 140 characters would help translate her tweets.