X Factor Opening Weekend Social & Video Analysis
X Factor has brought back some old faces for season 13 and it would seem to on account of the opening weekend, have got its mojo back. It hit the ground running with a more light hearted, funny and playful version of itself than in recent series.
The chemistry between the judges seemed effortless and it was if they’ve all never been away. It has gone down well in moving media content tracked and analysed on Instagram and Twitter so far. The X Factor production team have clearly put social and video at the heart of it all posting pre prepared short snippets of content up on to Twitter the moment it is broadcast on our screens. It has also harnessed Instagram but Twitter proved to be the winning platform in terms of volume by some distance.
Of the 58 videos and GIFs that were posted across the opening weekend by official ITV, ITV2 and X Factor related accounts, 46 of them (79.3%) were pre-planned GIFs posted on to Twitter compared to just 4 videos posted to Instagram and 8 on Twitter.
Nicole Scherzinger emerged as the Queen of the X Factor Opening Weekend after not only seeing the highest increase in followers on Twitter and Instagram but also appearing in the most videos and featuring in the best performing GIF — all by a considerable margin.
Of the 37,131 new followers that the presenters and judges collectively accumulated on Twitter and Instagram across the opening weekend 47.4% were by Nicole Scherzinger alone. Closest was Rylan Clark-Neal receiving 18.1% new followers.
In the top 5 best performing GIFs:
- Nicole Scherzinger led the way in first place with a perfectly timed GIF at 8.01pm just as the first episode started and tapping in to everyone searching for the #XFactor hashtag
while Honey G took spots 2
and 3 (!)
A comedy GIF of a contestent walking in to the wrong door took spot 4
While a talented singing contestant came in at number 5
It was also a triumph for comedy over sob stories. 18 of the 58 videos or GIFs (31%) were of funny impromptu moments caught on camera.
The only video posted categorised under ‘emotional’ but which was also saw the most engagement by an individual video was Christian Burrows’ fantastic and moving tribute to his brother. The video posted by The X Factor saw over 11,000 retweets and 20,000 likes on Twitter.
Nothing came close to it in terms of engagement with the nearest most retweeted video being a short clip of Honey G which received 607 retweets and 1107 likes. Tapping in to both comedy and sadness are powerful sharing emotions as we see here with what content has travelled furthest.
While Twitter may be winning in short social video by volume of content being posted (54 out of the total 58 videos and GIFs were posted to Twitter), Instagram saw the most followers gained by the presenters and judges accounts which is a clear indication that Instagram with just 4 videos posted is not the destination for real time interaction but it is increasingly the place that people want to use to follow a filtered view of the judges and presenters lives.
