So You’ve Heard Live-Tweeting Is Important, But Don’t Know Why Or How To Join In?

erinescence:

How does live-tweeting help the show? 

Nielsen tracks tweets originating in the U.S. with the #Hannibal hash tag and counts them in the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings.

If we get the hashtag trending, we’re also providing additional promotion for the show and its advertisers.

That sounds good. What IS live-tweeting? 

Live-tweeting is any tweet you make with the #Hannibal tag from 3 hours before the show airs through 3 hours afterward. So if Hannibal airs at 10PM in your area, any #Hannibal tweet you make from 7PM through 2AM counts! ( If you’re a non-US Fannibal, tweet between 7PM EDT and 5AM EDT.) The tweets don’t have to be profound. Even something like “Watching #Hannibal” is fine!

If you want to help get Hannibal trending on twitter, it’s most helpful to tweet during the show if at all possible.

Any do’s and dont’s? 

Glad you asked!

Nielsen doesn’t count tweets with profanity, so avoid that if possible.

Twitter views multiple tweets with more than 2 hashtags as spam, so try to stick with #Hannibal and perhaps one other tag so you don’t end up accidentally suspended by Twitter.

It’s fine to retweet other people’s tweets–they still count!

You’ll have a lot more fun if you’re following the cast and crew. I have a public list of them you can subscribe to or use to find and follow them individually. They will tweet out behind the scenes information and suggest additional hashtags related to the episode or its sponsors.

If you need help finding other Fannibals, tag me in a tweet and I’ll introduce you!

All this sounds great, but it’s too distracting to tweet while I’m watching.

You can tweet in those three hours before and after the show airs.

You can tweet during the commercials.

You can use a free twitter client like TweetDeck or HootSuite to schedule tweets to post in the measured time period. I schedule a few for every episode just in case I’m too overwhelmed to tweet while watching.

————————————————-

We were extremely successful in getting the hashtags trending last year and were always in the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings Daily Top Five–often the Top Three. Hope we can continue and build on our previous success!

Ask any questions you have in the comments!