@Nashville_ABC cast rents party bus for live-tweeting fest

A group of actors live-tweeting together in one place is nothing new, but the cast and crew of @Nashville_ABC decided to make it an event.

They rented a bus in the city of Nashville to live-tweet the October 23 episode. Throughout the evening, they toured Nashville, met fans, and of course, tweeted often. Here’s what live-tweeting on a swanky bus looked like:

More significant, perhaps, was the number of people associated with the show who were live-tweeting on the bus. @Nashville_ABC gave a shout-out to the talent:

And the effort worked: a 30% growth in the number of Tweets about the show between that night’s episode from the week before, according to SocialGuide’s Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings. The 15,000 Tweets about the show were seen 1.4 million times. Not surprisingly, it ranked as @ABCNetwork’s most social event of the night.

How it came together
First came direct promotion: The cast, crew and network all tweeted about the event ahead of the episode’s airing. Producer @GeoffreyColo tweeted out an announcement of the live-tweeting event along with a photo of the official Nashville Twitter bus.

Two hours before the episode started, @Nashville_ABC tweeted out a Vine video of star Connie Britton thanking fans for watching.

Country singer @carrieunderwood tweeted her excitement for @Nashville_ABC and a special surprise in that night’s episode. The post was the most retweeted of the night.

The Grand Ole Opry (@opry) was also in on the secret.

The live event

The cast and crew answered questions via the hashtag #AskNashville, provided trivia about the episode, and conversed and complimented each other. For instance, when #Nashville creator @CallieKhouri requested photos, co-executive producer and writer Meredith Lavender (@MerLavender) was more than happy to oblige:

The writers revealed the inspiration for a climactic moment in the episode.

When her character received an honor, @haydenpanettier tweeted about it.

When the episode was over, @Nashville_ABC thanked its fans for watching

For good measure, @haydenpanettier thanked the bus company.

The data

The live-tweeting event also brought about a surge of followers to the participants accounts. Twitter data shows that actor @CharlesEsten saw an 8% increase in followers, his biggest one-day increase in followers since the show’s premiere.

Actress Judith Hoag (@Heyjude629) also boosted her follower count by 8%, while episode writer Dana Greenblatt (@HotSpinsterAunt) went from 90 followers to 194, a 116% increase, over the course of two days.

By engaging large numbers of cast members on Twitter, the #Nashville live Tweet session was a way for fans to meet all the talent associated with their favorite show in one place at one time. Staging the event on a bus was an added twist.

Do you know of other innovative uses of Twitter? Write to mediablog@twitter.com.