F.A.R.E. Content Marketing

3 Insights the Twitter #NASCAR Campaign Reveals to Marketers

Twitter traffic is exploding. Nearly 3 years after the Wall Street Journal announced that it had gone mainstream, Twitter has gone mainstream again. This time on television, with its own Ad campaign to show big Brands how they can use Twitter for a rich, real-time, interactive multi-platform experience with tens of thousands of engaged fans. 

But, it would seem this weekend’s #NASCAR page demonstration, although attended by a top team from Twitter, was also meant to remind smaller businesses and potential advertisers of the value of using the platform to provide compelling content and to target a niche with a #hashtag. 

As Twitter expands its advertising offerings and continues to promote the platform to the masses, its value to content marketers will only increase.

Here are some takeaways I had watching the #NASCAR campaign:

1. Storytelling with images: Some might still be thinking Twitter is just text, and only 140 characters. But that’s far from the case with Twitter’s re-design last December. Photos are featured prominently and provide a real-time view well beyond just the text. So, consider how you might gather images from unique viewpoints and tell a compelling story along with your text.
   
   
2. Content curation: Twitter’s #hashtag pages uses “a combination of algorithms and curation to surface the most interesting Tweets”. That means, Tweets with the most interaction (Re-Tweets, Replies) and those about the most trending topics within the main #hashtag topic will be shown more prominently in the stream. This of course was unique to the #NASCAR event. But, this is only the beginning. There will be more events such as these that businesses can contribute their voice to. 
   
   
3. Twitter is going to increase its push into the mainstream: If the Ads on TV and its partnership with NASCAR (one of the most popular mass media attractions in the U.S.) aren’t evidence enough that Twitter is seeking to grow its audience, then just look at their blog post for this weekend’s event; 
   
   “Anyone watching the Pocono 400 on Sunday — even if you’re not a current Twitter user — can visit twitter.com/#NASCAR watch the race unfold from every angle, and get insider access to all the places the cameras can’t take you.”
   
   Access for non-Twitter users to Twitter content, will continue to grow. How will you take advantage? 

What takeaways did you have? 

11 June 2012 ·

• Tags
• Twitter
• content marketing
• content curation