All around the world, people are preparing to don their greenest finery for St. Patrick's Day (or is it St. Patty's Day?) and the controversial debate of Ts vs Ds has the social world divided. The impending Irish holiday (celebrated with beer-fueled debauchery here in the States) is just one of the stories that trended on social this week.
The "greatest show on earth" will apparently go on sans elephants, to the triumph and joy of animal rights activists everywhere. And Hill has had better days, as she gets dragged into seemingly unrelated conversations such as the trending #47traitors discussion.
Buckle up, kids, it's time to get data-driven.
No More Circus for Elephants
Last week, Ringling Brothers announced that the "Greatest Show on Earth" will go on without elephants, planning to phase them out by 2018.
We began tracking the conversations the afternoon of the announcement and saw more than 36,000 mentions of the news. Reactions were also six times more positive than negative on Twitter.
While Feld Enterprises Inc. has insisted that animals rights activists were not responsible for the retirement, the news was celebrated by PETA and the Humane society, with many animal rights groups taking credit for generating public concern. Interestingly, we saw many mentions of SeaWorld and the documentary Blackfish, with people saying it's "your move" to Sea World.
While the news was celebrated, many social media users turned to SeaWorld to put pressure on them to "empty the tanks." The most popular hashtag we saw was #Blackfish with more than 1,400 mentions. #EmptytheTanks (430+ mentions) and #SeaWorld (230+ mentions) were also in the most used hashtags. Overall, we saw more than 2,200+ mentions of SeaWorld, with many linking to a political cartoon of an elephant telling an orca "there's hope."
Unsurprisingly, @RinglingBros was the most mentioned Twitter handle. We also saw mentions of @SeaWorld and @PETA.
Actor Josh Malina from the popular TV show, Scandal, made it to the most mentioned tweeters when he asked why Ringling Brothers "have to phase elephants out? It's not heroin. It's elephants. They can't do it all at once?"
We also saw many mentions of Andy Marlette, a political cartoonist for the Pensacola News Journal for his political cartoon.
Typically, we see the most conversations from New York and California, which is true for this conversation as well. However, we also saw many mentions from Florida, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.
Let's hear it for the ladies - International Women's Day
We saw more than two million mentions of International Women's Day on March 8th. The most popular hashtag was #InternationaWomensDay (891,400+ mentions), followed my #IWD2015 (442,500+ mentions). The @UN_Women Twitter handle was the most popular with more than 39,600 mentions. The event received over 60K mentions per hour (100 per minute) at its peak.
Celebrities also used their platform to showcase the day including Emma Watson and her He for She campaign was one of the most mentioned (22,100+ mentions) and Taylor Swift's IWD tweet received more than 30,000 retweets.
The BBC Doctor Who Twitter handle also received a lot of engagement as they posted photos of the Doctor's companions to celebrate Women's Day.
We also tracked mentions of YouTube's #DearMe campaign (more than 128,000 mentions) and the Clinton Foundation's #NotThere ad campaign (18,000+ mentions).
Women led the conversations with a 70% share of voice.
Time for some fruity wristwear
This week, Apple finally announced their newest product (although we all knew it was coming) the Apple Watch.
During the Apple Live Event, we saw hashtags of #AppleLive lead the way in conversations (59%), followed by the Apple Watch (21%), and the newly designed MacBook (10%). However, there were many mentions of the price of the Apple Watch Edition, which was priced at $10,000.
Between 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET on March 9, mentions of Apple Watch (55%) led the conversations around Apple's Live Event. This was followed by the MacBook (25%), Research Kit (9%), Apple TV (7%), and the iPhone (4%).
Overall, we saw that tweeters were happy with #AppleLive, especially with the announcement of the Research Kit, and HBO NOW for AppleTV. What people didn't love, the $10K Apple Watch Edition.
Random Tweets of Kindness
We have been coordinating with Lars Schmidt, founder of Amplify Talent, who ran the campaign last year as an experiment to track the results of the "Random Tweets of Kindness Campaign."
Twitter users were encouraged to send kind words of thanks and encouragement to people who have impacted them on March 11 using the hashtag #RTOK to contribute to the community of positivity.
In the past week (March 6-12, 2015) we saw more than 4,100 mentions of "Random Tweets of Kindness." Unsurprisingly, mentions have been 36 times more positive than negative.
The most popular hour for tweets occurred at 12 p.m. EDT (4 p.m. GMT) with 400+ mentions.
Of note, this graph represents GMT timezone
Women led the conversations with a 54% share of voice. The interests of tweeters included business, family & parenting, books, and technology. Executives (34%) and Sales/Marketing/PR (20%) were the top professions of those participating in the conversations. We saw many mentions from the HR and the job recruiting community who took the time to recognize the talents of their employees.
A majority of #RTOK tweets originated in the U.S. (87%). The top states include:
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California (nearly 400 mentions)
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Virginia (275+ mentions)
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Illinois (230+ mentions)
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Texas (190+ mentions)
#47Traitors
You may have seen the hashtag, #47Traitors trending for a few days on Twitter this week. There's been a lot of debate over the open letter to leaders of Iran posted online Monday by Senator Tom Cotton, the document was signed by 47 Republican senators.
We provided data to the New York Times who explained that "Outraged Democrats, eager to defend President Obama's effort to negotiate a deal intended to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, posted tens of thousands of messages on Twitter. They used the tag #47Traitors to describe the Republicans who signed the letter and who the Democrats say are undermining the president's authority."
There were more than 208,000 mentions on Twitter of the hashtag #47Traitors, with conversations spiking around 4 p.m ET on March 10 with 13,000+ mentions, following Hillary Clinton's press conference where she discussed her emails and also mentioned the recent letter from Republicans. Reactions have also been 3.5 times more negative than positive towards the letter and Republicans.
In addition to the #47Traitors hashtag (208,000+ mentions), #IranLetter (13,200+ mentions), and #UnitedBlue (9,900+ mentions) have been the most used in the conversation. Interestingly, the hashtag, #47Patriots (9,500+ mentions), of people defending those who signed the letter was also pulled into the conversations with #47Traitors. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton), author of the letter, has been the most mentioned tweeter with more than 11,200 combined tweets and retweets.
While most of the conversation has been based in the U.S. (81%), we took a look to see which states discussed the letter the most:
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California: 9,000+ mentions
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Texas: 6,000+ mentions
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New York: 5,000+ mentions
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Florida: 4,900+ mentions
Who IS Patrick?
Since we are less than week away from St. Patrick's Day we took a look at social data for March (so far!) to see who's talking about St. Patrick's Day and are they saying Paddy, Patty or Patrick?
Since March 1, 2015, we have seen more than 6,600 mentions of people and brands saying "Happy St..." with variations of Patrick, Paddy or Patty. So far mentions of "Patrick" (74%) are leading the conversations, followed by "Patty" (14%) and Paddy (12%).
What's Next?
In the next few weeks we're getting amped up to track the key social media conversations at SXSW 2015 and the MTV Movie Awards in April, and of course keep a close eye on all things trending, shareable, and newsworthy.
Interested in learning more about social listening and data or have a question for Brandwatch? Visit us here or email me [email protected]!