In an effort to get an extra traffic boost for its election coverage, the Washington Post is sponsoring the “#election” tag on Twitter Tuesday.
Anyone who clicks on the promoted election topic on Twitter’s homepage on Tuesday is redirected to the topic page where the Post’s tweets — with links to its election coverage — appear at the top.
Movie and television studios were among the first to take Twitter up on its promoted trends when they launched in April (on Monday, TBS sponored "#ConanShowZero” as a trending topic) but the move is notable for the news media business.
According to Twitter, this is the first time that a news organization has used its “promoted trends.” (Ironically, the Post has some of the most strict rules governing its reporters' use of Twitter in the entire media business.)
“The Post has the potential to lead the story cycle about the election on Twitter by maintaining a consistent presence," Twitter director of media partnerships Chloe Sladden noted in an e-mail to Poynter. "Their planned use of our Promoted Products platform to tell the unfolding story of the midterm elections — breaking updates on races, voter calls-to-action, streaming video in the right-hand pane of new Twitter — is perfectly aligned with readers who expect their news to be real-time, multimedia, and personally engaging."
No word on how much the Post paid to promote its tweets, but according to Mashable, they generally sell for $100,000 or more.
