The NYC marathon is one of the biggest events in the New York calendar and the largest marathon to date. Naturally, Twitter is a big part of connecting the live event with the rest of the world and is a channel that thousands took to over the weekend, in order to share thoughts, encouragements and personal bests.
Using Twilert’s monitoring and alert tool, as well as the new reporting function, we decided to monitor the event in tweets to see who was saying what, which areas were most actively cheering the event on and which accounts were seeing the most action.
New York City Marathon Tweets
What were we tracking?
Well a few different things, but mainly we decided to use our Geolocation monitoring tool, which allows you to scan in on one specific street, City, area, or in this case- borough. We setup searches that would look for tweets containing the keyword ‘marathon’ from within New York’s five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, The Bronx and Queens – because what’s a bit of healthy competition between boroughs right New York?
We also tracked tweets that included key Twitter accounts such as @NYCmarathon (the official Twitter account for the event), @NYRR (New York Road Runners – the organizers) and @TCS_News, the title sponsor.
Alongside this we also wanted to get in on the hashtag action, looking at hashtags such as #TCSNYCMarathon – the official hashtag of the event and keywords such as ‘New York Marathon’ and ‘Central Park marathon’
What did we find?
Over 1,000 tweets alone containing the hashtag ‘#TCSNYCMarathon’ and many more from users who forgot to use hashtags or who instead tagged handles @NYCmarathon and @NYRR, including ones from some pretty big names such as Hugh Jackman and Dennis Crowley:
To all the runners of the @nycmarathon #nyrr … amazing job. What an awesome experience watching you! https://t.co/DhKVliSBMr
— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) November 2, 2014
Picking up my bib! #34224 (@ 2014 TCS New York City Marathon Health and Fitness Expo) https://t.co/uVJcuTeHfd pic.twitter.com/lwgCV6wKq3 — Dennis Crowley (@dens) October 31, 2014
Which borough did it best?
The one that everyone was waiting for, which borough did it best when it came to cheering along the runners and taking part in the Twitter action?
Surprisingly, Brooklyn just pipped Manhattan to the post at being the most vocal on Twitter, with 4033 tweets to Manhattan’s 4029. This was followed by Queens, The Bronx and finally, Staten Island, who to be fair, probably struggled to see the finish line from across the water.
Most popular users mentioned
The most popular users associated with mentions of the keywords ‘new york’ + ‘marathon’ (other than the official event and organizer handles) included press such as @WSJ, @nypost, @NewYorker and @ABC7NY
When it came to the official #TCSNYCMarathon hashtag, things became a little more interesting, with top associated hashtags (outside of the official event hashtags and misspellings of those) ranging from #RunHappyNYC and #GetNYOn to #gofredsteam – a hashtag associated with Fred’s team – an athletic fundraising program, dedicated to raising money into cancer research through athletic events.
Pre-event there had been some great hashtag campaigns running from key sponsors, such as Air BNB, who executed their #GoTheExtraMile campaign, but it was surprising to see that none of the sponsors featured very heavily in the public’s tweets regarding the marathon on the day of the event itself.
One exception to this was Asics, whose hashtag #teamasics was one of the most popularly used alongside the official hashtag. The Asics Editor’s challenge invited bloggers to run alongside the Elite runners under the banner #teamasics which was clearly an effective way of spreading their reach throughout the event.
One brand who also did well (unofficially) was Sparkly Soul, Inc. whose hashtag #SparklysoulNYCMarathon was also one of the top 20 associated with the official event hashtag #TCSNYCMarathon
Big names
Using the filter:verified search operator, we also found various tweets from big names in the sporting and celebrity world, who took to Twitter to offer their support and encouragement:
Is it normal to cry when someone finished marathon? So proud of you caro @CaroWozniacki #nycmarathon — Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) November 2, 2014
Trying 2 stay warm & calm prerace w/ new friends fellow runners @CaroWozniacki @RichardBlais #tcsnycmarathon pic.twitter.com/YSxhleN0PL
— Teri Hatcher (@HatchingChange) November 2, 2014
Had a great run in Central Park this morning! Can’t wait to watch the #TCSNYCMarathon on Sunday! #TeamKara pic.twitter.com/B2QR3B2cDJ — emma coburn (@emmajcoburn) October 31, 2014
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