RANGERS manager Steven Gerrard has been named as the most influential person on social media in Scottish football.

The Liverpool legend and England international came out on top with more than eight million followers on Instagram, more than five times the nearest challenger, Rangers striker Jermaine Defoe, who counts almost 1.5 million followers across Twitter and Instagram.

While Rangers has arguably the most influential manager and player on social media, Celtic leads the way in terms of club social media reach.

The Scottish Premiership Champions have more than three million followers across Twitter (635,484+), Instagram (406,848+) and Facebook (2,031,839+).

READ MORE: Celtic storm above Rangers in Global Club Soccer Rankings

Celtic’s social media audience is more than double that of second-place Rangers (1,439,677+), and more than the entire rest of the league combined (3,074,171+ vs 2,439,522+).

In third place is Aberdeen with a combined total of 250,000. In the battle of Edinburgh, it is Hibernian who take social media bragging rights with 189,000 compared to Hearts 157,000 followers.

The research was conducted by public relations, digital and football agency PMPR Excellence.

The research logged the followers of Scottish Premiership players on Twitter and Instagram, Scottish Premiership managers on Twitter and Instagram, and Scottish Premiership clubs on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

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The top-ranked Celtic player is fifth-placed Scott Sinclair who benefits from a career at multiple big clubs in English football. 

Celtic left-back Kieran Tierney is the most followed Scottish player with over 430,000 followers, split across Twitter and Instagram.

The highest-ranked non-British player is Celtic’s Australian international Tom Rogic, with more than 213,000 followers. 

The oldest player in the top 25 is 17th placed Rangers Allan McGregor, 37, with 118,000 followers. 

The youngest player in the top 25 is 19-year-old Rangers forward Glenn Middleton with a combined audience of 86,000.

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Editor of the PMPR football social influencer tables, Gordon Sheach, said: “While reigning Premiership Champions Celtic are by far the most dominant club - with their club channels attracting a wider audience than the rest of the league combined - the undoubted king of social media in Scottish football is Steven Gerrard with an incredible eight million followers on Instagram. This is, of course, influenced by his status as a Liverpool icon and star of English and world football.

“It’s interesting to find many players have a higher social media audience than their clubs, with almost every club's first-team squad having a larger reach than the club-owned channels. The two exceptions to this are Motherwell and St Mirren.”