I was lying in the sun in a paradisiacal setting, as billionaires usually do in summer, when strange things started to happen on Twitter. I found out when two of my interns came paddling a canoe to my island to warn me by making “he’s messed up brown” gestures with his hands, so I had to put aside the tortilla container (that one is a millionaire but a person of customs).
Resigned to being called by duty, I took off my headphones where the hit of the summer was playing (“El pepinaso” by Leticia Sabater, what a song) and looked at the cell phone that was handed to me on a silver platter, ready to flog them if they had bothered me for a trifle But no, it was true, he had messed up.
Specifically, he had messed it up.
I confess that I was also one of those who were refreshing Twitter every 10 seconds waiting for their next tweet. The story had it all: narrated in real time, accompanied by videos and photos, with intrigue and suspense, a supernatural point and tremendously addictive. Tears of happiness filled my eyes. Finally, someone was doing something original on Twitter. And above, literary (or narrative, as you prefer).
The story of Manuel Bartual shakes Twitter
Manuel Bartual, a comic artist, designer and father of a movie () shot with webcams and mobile phones, has managed to get half of Spain and a good part of Latin America hooked for no more and no less than three full days to his supernatural story about mysterious clones and parallel realities . Aside from the story itself, seeing how each tweet was generating comments at a rate of 1,000 per minute! and how his account gained more than 400,000 followers was simply amazing.
In case someone (I doubt it) does not know what the story is about, this is the beginning of the Twitter thread that has catapulted him to fame:
I’ve been on vacation for a couple of days, in a hotel near the beach. Everything was going fine until strange things started to happen.
– Manuel Bartual (@ManuelBartual)
And from here, to the (ephemeral) glory of Twitter: The ‘top’ accounts and many brands they began to echo what was happening (looking for, it must be said, his piece of free publicity):
https://twitter.com/trivago_ES/status/901384422452326400
Until the accounts @policia, @guardiacivil and celebrities like Gerard Piqué, Iker Casillas, Dani Rovira and many others joined the party.
😉Lo dicho, no te creas todo lo que leas en #RedesSociales, hay mucho #fake
¡Pero a veces encuentras historias apasionantes! #GraciasManuel https://t.co/5R18TOwBqy— Policía Nacional (@policia) August 27, 2017
He was in the next room. I saw you pass.
— Gerard Piqué (@3gerardpique)
Lo de @ManuelBartual es lo mejor que le ha pasado a twitter en años. He dejado mi vida de lado para ver cómo coño acaba todo esto…😰😰
— Dani Rovira (@DANIROVIRA) August 26, 2017
They immediately began to appear parallel Accounts, some to try to take advantage of the pull, but a few that began to develop their own ‘fan fictions’, which were synchronized with the original story. The account of the hotel reception, several accounts of the ‘other Manuel’ (some very good) and a few accounts of Manuel’s bun (a forgotten bun to which several Twitter users gave a soul and a life of its own).
The story had come to life and was already flying alone. Thousands of memes asking Manuel to tweet and continue the story, supporters and detractors, haters and megafans, literally nothing else was talked about over the weekend.
And in the end, the tweet with which Manuel Bartual ended the story (don’t worry, it’s not a spoiler) and its tremendous response and interaction figures:
Hello?
– Manuel Bartual (@ManuelBartual)
14,000 responses! In an account that days before was practically unknown. In the three days that history lasted, there were up to 3 trending topics related to it at the same time. It jumped to all the media. Many newspapers published the entire thread and updated it. Manuel Bartual had ascended to the Olympus of Twitter in a single jump.
A few lessons to learn from Manuel Bartual
Manuel Bartual is not a specialist in , nor in online marketing, but he is a very active user of Twitter (45,000 published tweets) and a pioneer in the social network in Spain (has account since 2007). In other words, he knows very well the language and behavior of Twitter users.
For my part, I have already commissioned my slave interns to carry out a detailed analysis of the keys to each tweet, reach, and all kinds of metrics, because the poor in the University and the masters are brainwashed with the metrics of such So they think that’s the only thing that matters. I’m not going to pay any damn attention to them, but you know, Happy intern doesn’t sneakily stab you at night on a dark street.
Jokes aside, and leaving aside the content of the story itself, there are some lessons that we can learn from Manuel Bartual’s thread:
1.Originality to power
People are more than fed up of always reading the same thing. and trying to innovate content is not easy, but It is an effort that is rewarded. And now some hater will come out (in fact many have already come out) saying that he has not innovated anything, that he has copied Orson Welles, that telling a story in tweets has already been done before… Envy is very bad, little friends.
2.Real time
If even Twitter itself asks you when you open it: What’s going on? Not “what happened?” or “how cool are your products?” tell what happens NOW, because it is what people want to read. And if you don’t have anything to tell, rack your brain to do it, because there are always interesting things that attract the audience.
3. There is no better promotion than the one that doesn’t seem like it
Let’s not forget that Manuel Bartual has a film to sell and probably other projects that need financing. And I’m risking some tips that his phone is smoking right now. He wanted to show that he is a good screenwriterthat people see his film, and of course he has achieved it without mentioning it even once.
4.Interaction
Manuel Bartual (especially at the end) has been adding things that emerged in the comments to his tweets. Even, indirectly, he has been answering the questions of his followers. Namely, bothered-to-read-the-comments. I won’t ask any more questions, Your Honor.
5. Preparation and planning
This has not occurred to him on the fly. He himself has said that he already had the whole story, that he knew how it would end and that he has managed the times to create narrative tension and the impression of real time. This story I had a script and a previous job.
6.Visual language
The videos and photos were not placed because yes. We tend to believe that, as we have been told that videos and photos work well on social networks, EVERYTHING has to have a video or a photo, and obviously this is not the case. Each thing has to have a narrative justification, and the text has to refer to what is seen in that video or photo.
7. Storytelling
If you have a business, you have a . Both why, when and how you assembled it, even small stories that happen to you every day. Those things hook the audience.
In short, Manuel Bartual has done a splendid job, he has managed to keep half the country in anguish despite knowing that it was fiction, he has made masterful use of audiovisual resources and has achieved a promotion that would have cost thousands of euros.
Lesson for this business we must learn to apply our in
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