In our rankings of 2015, we find the content trends that drove enormous shares across Twitter.
It’s been a busy month at NewsWhip. We’ve identified the most engaging publishers in online media, along with the top brands, politicians, and sports teams on social media this year. But the year’s not over yet.
Using Spike, we pulled exclusive data to find the most-shared tweets in 2015 produced by publishers.
Spike’s new Twitter features let us explore the top-performing tweets according to engagement. We can further delineate by ranking by retweets or shares, searching specific keywords, handles, or hashtags, and more. Let’s take a look.
The 20 Most Tweeted Stories of 2015
An eclectic list at first glance, but one we can draw some powerful insights from. With 50,000 to over 360,000 shares, the top Twitter content runs the gauntlet on sports, pop culture, science, and some of the hard-hitting news stories of the year.
Gossip in 140 Characters or Less
One Direction and Justin Bieber are the undeniable content champions of Twitter. Eight of the top tweets were related to Justin Bieber, who has always been popular on social, but even more so since he staged his comeback. Five had to do with One Direction and the boy band’s members.
The top tweet content was published by UK site Sky Sports. The article and accompanying video show One Direction’s Niall Horan tripping while caddying for golfer Rory McIlroy. That was helped well on its way to Twitter infamy with a helping hand from bandmate Liam Payne.
Oh noooo, niall https://t.co/3ATWboFCel
— Liam (@LiamPayne) April 13, 2015
Video was a big player for publishers this year, both natively and on their social channels. While the Sky Sports video was longer than recommended (videos less than a minute tend to see the best engagement), the action happened within the first few seconds of the video.
As we’ve noticed before, combining celebrities or popular influencers can propel social engagement even further. Mashable did this too: their top article on Twitter was about boxer Floyd Mayweather and Justin Bieber becoming friends over an app.
Appreciate everyone loving the album. Thank u
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) December 14, 2015
Justin Bieber and the members of One Direction have enormous followings on their social channels. Justin Bieber retweets articles mentioning him, replies to fans excited to snag tickets, and regularly shares his thanks to his followers, team, and everyone who supports him. He creates ripples of engagement for publishers that tag along on his fame.
[bctt tweet=”.@justinbieber and @onedirection dominated Twitter in 2015 #whatdoyoumean #notsorry “]
Where are the Hard News Publishers?
The New York Times makes it into the top-shared tweets for their own bit of pop culture news—announcing Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy’s death.
Top Twitter publisher the BBC appears twice in our top 25 most-shared tweets. Once for their UK general election live blog on May 7th, and again for “‘Pretend Muslims’ killed my brother”, an emotive article following the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The long-running election blog brought real-time news as the election unfolded through the ongoing votes, quotes, and tweets. The page had an abundance of multimedia and embedded social media posts, prompting readers to click-through. Share buttons on each update made it easy for users to distribute the updates they liked or found interesting.
Despite not securing as many shares as the pop culture content, the hard news pieces still used engaging tactics. All of these posts had video, emphasizing again how important this medium has become to digital storytelling.
Sports Sweep Shares
ESPN, one of our top publishers, take the third most-shared tweet, a video about Stuart Scott’s legacy. As we’ve seen in our sports analyses, nostalgia pieces get big engagement, especially about sports legends. The video received over 164,000 shares on Twitter, a tribute to the life of Stuart Scott, a longtime ESPN anchor.
Another top article was from The Players Tribune, with over 63,000 shares. ‘Life After Basketball’ was a personal letter by Steve Nash announcing his retirement from professional basketball, much like Kobe’s post this year that also saw social success. Nash is a social media veteran, popular on other platforms such as Reddit for holding open forums with fans. English soccer club Arsenal also sneaks in the rankings for their announcement of Petr Cech joining the team in June. 54,000 tweets point to the popularity of the club. Sports have a built-in fanbase, and their fans are eager to share any news about their passion.
Space, the Final Frontier
In addition to the New York Times’ post about Leonard Nimoy, or Spock, there were three other space related pieces that made the most-shared list. Two posts were from NASA, both about discoveries. One was the discovery of an earth-like planet, and the other about water on Mars. NASA is winning their social game this year with over 500 social media accounts and content like the Pluto heart going viral.
Hello #Pluto! We’re at closest approach. Congrats to all! Follow our story & view new images using #PlutoFlyby. pic.twitter.com/8JVlJrcUkY
— NASA New Horizons (@NASANewHorizons) July 14, 2015
Meanwhile, political site Mother Jones’ curious article “Why UFO activists are excited about another Clinton presidency” was tweeted over 67,000 times.
The curiosity factor drives shares for these stories. Influencers like Elon Musk consistently make headlines for advances in space technology, which space-related shows such as Star Wars, “The Martian”, and Doctor Who were omnipresent in 2015. Interesting, new, and thought-provoking stories like space discoveries make for sharable content.
Tactics That Leave Us Twitterpated
While there were several different areas of content, many of the publishers used similar tactics.
12 of the 25 top-shared articles had video content. Video content is exploding on social platforms, especially with a focus from big players like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Tailored-for-social videos are predicted to become ubiquitous, keeping in mind that people like them short and snappy.
[bctt tweet=”How to get Twitter shares in 2016? Pop culture, sports, and videos get people talking”]
Digital content needs to be scannable. Readers want to quickly glean interesting information from a piece and jump immediately to the next thing. Their time is short. MTV’s appearance in our rankings was a listicle of Justin Bieber pre-fame videos. Concise stories speak to the way people read and digest content online. On mobile, articles that can be read in short bursts will see high engagement.
Pop culture and celebrities sell. Our top publishers used pop culture to produce content that inspired people to share. That engagement was enhanced when the content had to do with multiple celebrities.
Twitter has already taught us how to pitch our content in 140 characters. But content has to be worthwhile to motivate users to share it with others. By staying ahead of compelling content trends and proactive user design, publishers can create content that will distribute itself across social.
Where Does the Data Come From?
Curious about our data? Sign up for a free trial of Spike, our content discovery platform. Explore the most engaging tweets in real-time and find new trends.
Subscribe to our blog for updates on what’s to come in 2016. Next up, we’ll go into the top content this year on Facebook.
