Monday December 3rd Trending Word…

#SecretSanta

This Monday’s episode of Castle is one that would be a suitable introduction to new viewers, especially those who enjoy science fiction or who may have attended fan conventions before.

ABC is working with fans this season to help trend Castle on Twitter for certain new episodes. We all did a great job for the season 5 premiere resulting in our word trending in numerous different countries including the US and in some places for over an hour giving us the opportunity to reach new viewers!

This Monday evening once we announce the trend word we encourage you to target your tweets to new viewers, particularly those in the sci fi community or those who just enjoy good old fun.

Due to our administrator traveling in the UK on Monday, in the event we can’t get the trend word posted here (we will make every effort to get it up) please be aware you will be able to find the word on the ABC website via this link on Monday evening around 5-6pm Eastern.

Let people know that we’re coordinating efforts with ABC and the trend word will be revealed to all on Monday night! The more people that we can reach the better our chances of success. The goal of this trend attempt is to reach new viewers and encourage them to watch Castle on Monday.

Why Trend?

The reason for trending is to raise awareness and encourage new people to watch Castle. When a word sticks on the Trending Topics list on Twitter people use the Twitter search feature on that word and will see all the tweets containing it. When they read everyone’s excitement about Castle they’ll want to check it out for themselves… right? (Nod approvingly )

Why Not Give Us The Word Now?

Because the Twitter Trending Thingo (Trending Algorithm, complex software that decides what is trend-worthy) pays way less attention to anything that’s been on Twitter for a while, it’s when something hits suddenly out of the blue that it stands up and takes notice, so the more sudden the impact, the more likely it will succeed. This means we won’t give the word out early because no matter how much you plead with people not to, they will post it on Twitter.

When Will You Give Us the Word?

We’ll post the word right here on Monday evening and you’ll also find it on the ABC website.

Will Any Word Do?

No! This is a big one. The word or phrase needs to be chosen very carefully and a lot of things need to be taken into consideration. We’ve actually been researching this since we first started our trending efforts way back in September 2009 so we know what works and what doesn’t (yeah, yeah, there’s no guarantees ANYTHING will work, we know that ) We’re more than happy to go into specific details with you but from past experience it’s hard to explain and it’s kind of complicated so we won’t bore you with it here, feel free to ask though! Catch Admin in chat, that’s the easiest way. Because we’re teaming up with ABC we need to have the word approved a certain amount of time in advance, so we can’t change things at short notice.

What Else Do We Need to Know?

The best way to make sure this works is for everyone to be on the same page. Help us get the word out when the time is right by posting on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and anywhere else you can think of so that the word is spread as far as possible. Point people to this page castletv.net/trend or to the ABC website for more information.

You also need to know the important stuff below, if you don’t understand any of that or want to know why those things matter please post in the comments below.

Important Stuff

• Please do not tweet the word before the specified time
• If we are using a # in front of our keyword, don’t include more than one # in a single tweet during the trending efforts (Tweets like this get completely ignored by the Twitter Trending Thingo)
• Make it relevant, when you tweet the word talk about Castle as well. Let people know when/where to watch (eg include something like “Castle, Tonight on ABC at 10/9c”) that way when people see the trending topic and they click on the search button they’ll see tweets mentioning Castle.
• Retweets count so please retweet other tweets with the tag that you find interesting.
• Volume counts.. but variety counts more! 1000 people tweeting once each counts way more (according to the Twitter Trending Thingo) than 100 people tweeting 10 times each.
• Copy the word on your clipboard (highlight, right click, copy or Ctrl+C) so it’s easy to paste it into your tweets.

Does It Really Work?

When it’s done right and everybody works together… absolutely! Click on the image below to see how many places we got “#tellhimyoulovehim” to trend.. but more importantly we got it to stick in some of those places including the US (which is the most important one for this exercise because that’s where Castle is airing) and Worldwide for over an hour. During that hour, lots and lots of people saw that tag, clicked search and read about Castle. Win!

Just some of the places we caught the trend. Click to Enlarge

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Sep 24, 2012: This week we managed to trend Worldwide, in numerous countries and most importantly in the US. We need to work on getting US Tweeters more involved however because it is difficult to compete with MNF which generally takes up the majority of places in the trend list there.

It was interesting to note some unplanned additions (see the image below). We’ll update later in the week on the plan for next week.

Here’s an overview of what happened. (We didn’t manage to get screencaps of all places it trended).

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