Reaching the dizzy heights of the worldwide Twitter trending topic was never what we set out to achieve. But as soon as the #BTCCFollow idea for our client's account (@YuasaBTCC) started to grow one rainy evening in June, we raised our expectations and pursued the ultimate goal to make it the most talked about topic on the popular social network.
The idea was to establish engagement and intrigue via multi-conversations with British Touring Car fans as well as other motorsport fans over a concentrated period. Following insight from the success of a previous event with another Twitter account (@BTCCFollow) we promoted the hashtag #BTCCFollow and how users can get involved up to 48 hours leading up to the activity. Alongside @BTCCFollow, the idea gradually built momentum with other Twitter users, and when we announced we were being joined by both of the Honda Yuasa Racing drivers just prior to the start of the concentrated period, we had the foundation for a strong assault on the top Twitter trending subjects.
If you’re unfamiliar with #hashtags, they are a simple way of grouping conversations together where everyone taking part adds the same hashtag into their tweets. When you then search Twitter for the hashtag it will collate together all the tweets that use it, effectively showing a chronological stream of multi-conversations under the same hashtag.
But what is a Twitter Trend? Many of us have heard the statement, 'Trending on Twitter', and if you’re wondering what that means, you’re not alone!
Trends are determined by a Twitter algorithm that identifies popular keywords, phrases, and hashtags that are currently being used in tweets. To find out what is trending on Twitter for your chosen location, visit your homepage and look in the third box in the left-hand column. If you would like to change your trend location, click “CHANGE” and choose a location more appropriate to you. To get trends that matter more to you, select “GET TAILORED TRENDS” which are formulated again by Twitter’s algorithms, but this time it is also based on who you follow and what they’re talking about.
The concentrated period for our #BTCCFollow activity got started with tweets inviting users to send us their BTCC related questions for the two Honda Yuasa Racing drivers Matt Neal and ‘Flash’ aka Gordon Shedden, which we filtered and passed onto the drivers. Our 'mentions' and 'interactions' streams instantly went from ‘active’ to ‘hyperactive’ to ‘off-the scale’. The shear number of tweets coming into us using #BTCCFollow was incredible with almost 5 tweets arriving every second, and Matt and Flash kept busy for an hour responding to question after question, helping fans get closer to their heroes and closer to a sport they love.
45 minutes into the event, we appeared in the top trending subjects, 5 minutes later we leap frogged all Euro2012 topics and reached what we thought was the pinnacle of our achievement - number one trending topic in the UK. This achievement was sustained for over2 hours, but it was at the 1 hour mark, we achieved the dizzy height of number one global trending topic... albeit for just 5 minutes, but top none the less.
If you want to discover more about creating brand awareness for your business through social media, or using social media within an integrated campaign, please call Purple Frog on 01844 295170 or more@purplefrog.co.uk
