Alec

McNayr

Brittany Curran of Work it, Berk emailed me the other day, asking about the origins and strategy of Historical Tweets.  I was proud of my answers below, and thought I’d share.  Work it, Berk, by the way, is a very clever niche concept… photos of hipster students on the streets of Cal Berkeley.

1. How did you come up with this idea? Did it just develop out of your studies in history and interest in social media, or is there more to it?

We came up with the idea after seeing Mad Men characters Twittering in mid-2008. People were signing up as the characters from the AMC show, and the juxtaposition of fake 1960s characters using 21st century technology was interesting. Thinking as a marketer and comedy writer, I called my friend (and former boss) about the idea of Twittering as all the previous U.S. presidents — and having them comment on the then-current presidential election. Luckily for us, that idea sounded like too much work (plus, how many times can Taft be funny?), so we settled on single tweets from lots of historical figures.

2. I started a street-fashion blog a few months ago called Work It, Berk. Although I’m starting to get a bit more traffic, I’m interested in knowing how your site was able to jump to 4.5 million page views in a year. What methods did you use? Word of mouth, other sites, Twitter, Facebook?

We launched the site in October 2008 with 50 tweets in queue, and we probably made 100 more blog posts total during the next 8 months. Around June/July 2009, we were featured on Time.com and CNN.com — and even Ashton Kutcher tweeted about us — and we got 2.5 million page views over a weekend. Crazy.

Honestly, we didn’t do any extensive marketing, nor do we continue to do so. It’s kind of a lesson plan on what not to do. Our Twitter account is not very active. We don’t have a Facebook fan page worth looking at. We don’t really reach out to other bloggers.  As the book looms closer, we’ll probably do more of that; talking to history and education bloggers.

The thing that we do successfully, though, is that we keep the content coming. The sheer amount matters. 10 tweets would never have taken off. We needed a critical mass of at least 100 posts to really get noticed. I don’t know why that’s a rule, but I think it is. Totally unscientific, and with no real numeric basis.  When it comes to online content, it pays to be prolific.

The other positive thing is that we let others participate. From day 1, we put the Photoshop template on the site. The complexity of Photoshop keeps most fans from contributing, but it’s been a nice way to reward our true fans who want to do the extra work.

In the end, however, we just struck gold.  Our idea was right and the timing was right.  I’ve jotted down and created tons of sites in the past few years.  None of them have hit like this.  It was just my time.

And I’m not going to lie; every time I see someone tweet “I’m kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner,” the little malicious boy inside me grins and does a backflip.

3. What did you do before this site?

I’m a self-taught web designer with 10 years experience building web sites, leading marketing strategy. I also have a lot of experience acting and doing improv comedy — which has led me to write a lot of comedy TV scripts. Somehow, all those skills have contributed to this site happening the way it has…. but I never saw it coming.

4. Is this site for mere entertainment or do you do “corporate social media” for your day job?

The site, originally, was for entertainment. But now that we’ve gotten some traction and a book deal, we see it as a way to promote ourselves as creative thinkers and creators — people that can make something memorable and viral out of something as “boring” as history. We’re hoping the site can continue to entertain fans, but also bring corporate marketing clients our way. It’s already working… we’re close to working with a couple of big, international clients to do social media for them.  We’re really excited.

Thanks for your email, Brittany.  Best of luck to you as you push forward (keep pushing, btw… it will come…. you just don’t know what “it” will be).

Tags: historical tweets
Posted in Blog, Social Media, Strategy