Twitter has taken a scientific approach to investigating the impact of hashtags on reality television programs and come up with three key tips to drive significantly higher levels of viewer engagement.
By analyzing more than 350 hashtags associated with 8 U.S. prime-time reality shows from January to July 2014, Twitter has better understood what it is that drives engagement. They found that certain formats drive consumer engagement and “amplify key moments”.
“The goal of the analysis was to actually provide our media partners with real levers to enhance their social presence,” Twitter global media and agency research director Anjali Midha told AdWeek. “We want to find out how do we harness Twitter, and how do we make the viewing experience even better for the audience.”
There is a common theme throughout all the hashtags, says Twitter, and that is that they can all be easily connected back to the show.
Twitter admits that the tips they have developed from their findings are mostly common sense and straightforward. The first is that the hashtag should include the show’s name – a bit of a no-brainer. Secondly, Twitter noticed that by pairing together “team” with a cast member’s name, or a guest’s name (#teamXXX) “drives Tweets per minute” whereas leaving out “team” generates less buzz.
Finally, Twitter recommends using between 15 and 17 characters to describe a key moment. Shorter phrases or acronyms were found to be harder to adopt but one that contains enough information to adequately describe a moment, but was not too long, increased conversational momentum.
Twitter included in its research announcement that data from social monitoring firm Measured Reaction shows that nearly three-quarters (73%) of prime-time programs, across 10 broadcast and cable programs, used an in-program social call to action over the first half of 2014, with the majority taking the form of a hashtag.