Thunderclap? What's that? It's a social platform for making a bigger bang. Here in a case study is what it is and how it works.
by Anna Warren
I first heard of a Thunderclap when our friends at Fire and Rescue asked us to join theirs for the ‘Tick Tock Test’ campaign. Being a social media intern I felt a bit embarrassed that I had never heard of a one before. Luckily, when I looked around the team I realised no one else seemed sure either.
It was clear: we needed to get our hands on this tool and do some experimenting.
I caught on pretty fast that a Thunderclap would be perfect for promoting the premiere of Robson Green’s ‘Tales from Northumberland’ TV show (click here for a blog about this.)
For those who have no clue what a Thunderclap is…let me enlighten you. Essentially, you ask people to join your Thunderclap so that at the same, specified time it automatically sends the same tweet from everyone’s accounts. This means that your followers and their followers all see you message, what’s not to like?
It works well for announcing an event or reaching a goal and lots of charities use it for fundraising specific amounts of money. Even Beyoncé has given it a go!
The two most important benefits of the Thunderclap for this campaign were:
- Getting our message out to lots more Northumbrians
- The time element, coinciding our thunderclap to go out five minutes before the show started to give people the nudge to get watching
Now for some stats: 132 followers supported us and our message had the potential to reach 200,000 people on Twitter! For the 8 weeks the show aired, we used Facebook to do paid promoted posts every Monday the show was on to get people to engage and watch it. Over the 8 weeks our promoted posts had a total of 143,000 views and the single most popular post was viewed by 38,000 people.
When you consider the fact we had to pay for the 143,000 views versus the entirely FREE potential for 200,000 views, this is probably the best part of using the Thunderclap.
I would definitely say a Thunderclap is a nice one to add to a PR tool kit, and now if someone asks you to support theirs, you won’t have to look around the office sheepishly like I did.
Anna Warren is communications intern at Northumberland County Council.
