I was sitting watching the World cup semi-final last night between Brazil and Germany and checking out Twitter at the same time for reaction to events on the pitch. A most enjoyable experience was had by all! As you might know by now if you follow football, Brazil got hammered at home 1 : 7 and twitter could barely keep up. I’d only get a tweet out then another goal would go in (6 in 4 minutes from the Germans!?). I seen some great, great tweets and tried to add a few funny ones of my own but I just wasn’t in the same league as Colm Toibin who writes stuff for TV and is always wickedly funny.
During the game he tweeted this:
This is the worst Brazil team I’ve seen since me and my cousins pretended to be the Brazil team in the garden back in 1986. #WorldCup2014
— Colm Tobin (@colmtobin) July 8, 2014
It was the standout tweet for me from the night and it currently has 358 RTs and 340 favorites. Here’s why I think that tweet was so great and what I think you need to do/be when creating any kind of viral content online:
Topical
Obviously the tweet was topical and of the moment. It helped that a large majority of the planet and twittersphere were all watching the same thing and watching the same news story unfold so there was a ready made audience for Colm.
Exceptional
It was no ordinary game of football. Brazil hadn’t lost at home for nearly 40 years and no one had ever scored that many goals against the opposing team in a semi-final of a world cup…ever. The sense of history being created led to a hunger in people for content, quotes, opinions of others, etc..
Funny
There were losts of humorous tweets on the night, many mashing up the football with the other big news story of the day in Ireland at least, that the 5 Garth Brooks gigs were cancelled. A lot of the same jokes were repeated. Colm’s humor, as usual was a bit different and on a higher level. What he done was basically repeat the same quote that many including TV panelists were making, ie – “This is the worst Brazil team since….” and added a different, more personal dimension. See below.
Personalise
A great many of us now 30, 40 or 50 somethings who played football out on the street as kids would have played “world cup” in which an individual kid or whole team would pretend to be a team from the world cup and pretend, best they could to emulate their style of play or moves they’d seen on the tv. Everyone always wanted to be Brazil of course! The tweet also refers back to a time when Brazil and football in general was a bit more classy. So there was a nice nostalgic feel.
HashTags
To make sure your tweet is included in the general discussion on a certain topic and gets the maximum amount of views, always remember to include a hash tag. Not too many. One should be fine. Colm included the official World cup tag #WorldCup2014.
So in general..be funny, be memorable, be better, be topical and you won’t go far wrong.
Leon
Reverb Studios Design 