Game of Thrones is over, but it was one of the most popular and watched TV shows during its run. It broke many viewership records including the most watched series finale for HBO.
Riding the trend wave is a tried and true content strategy, but here we look at a blog post and some tweets that turned out to be extremely successful in implementing and executing this strategy by tapping into the popularity of Game of Thrones.
While many publications and brands use this strategy just for clicks, we want to emphasize that we only implement strategies that will be true to the brand and is genuine in nature.
We never write for SEO or write for click bait. We only implement optimizations and best practices that stay true to the article.
I did an interview with guitarist Andy Williams from the band Every Time I Die during the Vans Warped Tour for my online publication Highlark.
Andy is a very buff guy and so a friend of mine who is a fan of the band and the show begged me to ask him if he’d ever play the role of The Mountain, a stocky warrior character from the Game of Thrones series.
Luckily, Andy was a fan of the show and had actually met the actor in real life at a gym.
The article went on to be a huge success with over 5K shares. The reason for this can be broken down into 2 major themes:
On one end, the band had to have enough of an emotional response to the interview to want to share it across their platforms.
Once shared, the audience had to connect emotionally to like, share and comment on it. This was one of their most popular Facebook posts at the time.
Being completely transparent, we don’t focus our attention currently on our Highlark Twitter. We have around 460 followers and have not implemented any growth strategies yet.
This is also why the power of riding trends is so powerful. I tweeted this immediately after the opening scene of Season 6. The below tweet received 55 retweets and 166 likes which is phenomenal considering 460 followers. The tweet was also picked up by People Magazine’s coverage of the episode.
I tried this again few years later during a big episode on season 8, the final season. It did not get as much traction as the previous tweet but you can see it still managed to grab 15 retweets and 55 likes. When you look at the fact that the account averages 1~3 likes or retweets per post, these are still big numbers.
Jumping on the trend train is something that is always a good idea. Timing certainly comes into play, so using social media is a great way to react quickly to something that literally just happened.
Using eye catching creatives and a clever headline also helps, but ultimately the key is connecting to the audience on an emotional level that makes them want to engage with the content.
Again, you don’t want to just jump on the trend just because it works. Make sure the topic is something that is consistent with your brand and the emotions attached feel authentic.