What do history, Justin
Beiber and Shark Week have in common?
They may seem completely unrelated,
but linking something that can seen as mundane (like history) with something
exciting (to some people) like Justin Beiber or Shark Week (a week of shark
themed television) is just one way to engage with a new audience that may have
never been exposed to your tweets before now.
Of course Justin Beiber and
Shark Week are just two examples and there are lots of people, places and
events that you can link historical content to in order to expand your horizons
in terms of audience engagement and relationship building on social media like
Twitter.
How, do you ask, do I link
Shark Week to Canadian history? Well,
google is a great place to start.
Searching “Sharks Canadian History” on Google this morning I got some interesting
results that give me a really great jumping off point: the Canadian Museum of
Nature, a website on Marine Biodiversity and the Canadian encyclopedia.
Growing up in Nova Scotia
and often going swimming in the cool waters off our gorgeous coastline I always
asked my parents, “Are there sharks?” to which they would respond, no. So when I was prompted to find some links
between sharks (to tune in with Shark Week) and Canadian historic places I
thought – gee – this isn’t going to go well.
Well surprise, surprise –
Great White Sharks are spotted and/or captured every 2 – 3 years around Nova
Scotia, PEI etc. One of the places they’re
known to frequent is the iconic Bay of Fundy.
So I went out on a limb and searched ‘Bay of Fundy’ in the ever so
trusty historicplaces.ca database and came back with a few results including
this historic lighthouse http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=11808&pid=8893&h=Bay,Fundy.
So maybe we could craft a
tweet like this: “Shark spotting is rare in the Bay of Fundy but if you climb
this historic tower you might have a better view http://ow.ly/hzjoO
#SharkWeek”
The hashtag, discussed in a
previous post, is key here because the audience range will be greatly expanded
by its inclusion and will even potentially generate retweets and mentions that
will even further expand the audience.
The key is in choosing what
events, people and trends to link your product to. Do you think it will be beneficial for you to
link your product to Justin Beiber?
There’s most definitely a need to strike a balance between appealing to
a new audience and continuing to engage the one you already have. There must be a mix and this is where
analytics and stats can really help.
Sending out tweets at a
usual time of day (say 9am or 10am) might be more often viewed by an older
demographic whereas tweets later in the day or at lunchtime might work better
for a younger crowd. It all depends on
what kind of message you want to send and who you want it to get across to.
Giving people a usual time
of day at which to check and see what you’ve tweeted is nice – and if you want
to add additional tweets throughout the day tell your audience when and
why. Special events, tweet chats, etc.
are ways to engage your usual audience and draw in new followers.
So really, I’m not sure if
#SharkWeek and Justin Beiber have anything in common except for trending on
Twitter once in a while – but they can both help cultural and historical
organizations share their message beyond traditional audience members and reach
that much further into the Twitterverse.
