HISTORY’s social media strategy (see our earlier story) seems to have paid off for Hatfields & McCoys, the three part-miniseries starring Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton. The three-part format is not common on TV in the U.S., making it even more unpredictable if the hype of the show would translate on social and linear.
Success was an understatement as the three-part series finished off with 14.30 million total viewers, making it the number one “entertainment telecast of all time on ad-supported cable,” according to Zap2it’s TV By The Numbers. This translated to social as well. Hatfields & McCoys was the #2 primetime social show across all broadcast and cable networks over a three night span, and each night the show placed among the top 3 primetime cable shows,” according to Bluefin Labs.
A+E Networks’ SVP of Digital Media Evan Silverman described the success and how they used SocialGuide’s new ‘On Now’ tool:
The iconic American story, the star power of Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, the production values of the series, and the incredible marketing and PR efforts made our team’s job as much about fostering the buzz as generating it. Pre-premiere, we laid the groundwork with a Hatfields & McCoys theme week on the HISTORY Facebook page, an “Are You A Hatfield or McCoy?” Facebook app, and a Twitter hashtag feud encouraging people to choose a side using #hatfields or #mccoys when tweeting. During the series, we leveraged SocialGuide’s new “On Now” tool while live tweeting to analyze the audience and interact with the most engaged and influential accounts. It’s hard to prove causality with social media, but interesting to note that “Hatfields & McCoys” trended each night before the broadcast, and many people commented they were seeing so much conversation in their Twitter feeds that they had to tune in. The buzz certainly didn’t hurt.
Bluefin Labs provided an infographic with the social numbers…
