Why Fans Are Taking to Twitter to Save NBC’s Chuck

Can a flurry of Tweets and $5 Footlongs save Chuck?

Twitter is abuzz this week with the news that NBC’s Chuck needs saving. Word is out that the show, which has a small but enormously dedicated fan base, may not be picked up for another season. In response, fans are organizing, largely via Twitter, to descend upon Subway restaurants (the chain was featured prominently in a recent episode), to show the size — and presumably, the purchasing power — of the show’s audience. The phenomenon is not unlike the movements to save another NBC program, Journeyman, a bid that ultimately failed, and the CBS program Jericho, which got the show picked up for an additional season.

Now, the movement to save Chuck doesn’t just live on Twitter — bloggers are writing about the show, it’s being mentioned on message boards and there are Facebook groups, too, but Twitter’s getting all the buzz. Why might that be?

Part of it, of course, is that Twitter is the press’s current social media golden child. But the volume of conversation on Twitter can’t be ignored — now that the user base of the site has skyrocketed, its easy for movements like this one (and others that are not so positive — like Motrin Moms and AmazonFail — to gain momentum. Why is it easy? Well, Twitter offers an ideal system that nurtures these fledgling micromovements into full scale mass movements. Part one is that there’s an extremely low barrier to entry: All you need to do is tweet in a certain way, whether it’s with a # tag, or just about a specific topic. Writing a tweet is fairly low-investment, since there’s only so much thought that can be put into 140 characters. Plus, it’s got nice rewards associated: your friends see it, they respond, you get retweeted, you feel like part of a community. There’s lots of warm fuzzies to be had there. Plus, the barrier to entry for Twitter is always getting lower — you can link it up to other platforms, you can connect it to your mobile phone — who knows how low the barrier could go?

Contrast that with, say, a blogstorm about a particular topic. Sure, the rewards are potentially bigger, you might get more visitors to your site if your cause-supporters link to you, but there’s all that investment of writing a post about why you think whatever needs saving should be saved. And contrast it with all those Facebook groups that start with “1,000,000 Strong for…” — it’s even easier to click “join this group” than it is to write a Tweet, but in many user-created groups, once you’ve joined, you’ve got nothing left to do. Groups sometimes don’t offer the same sense of an immediately responsive community that Twitter does.

The very best social media experiences combine these two traits — easy to engage plus a respectable reward for getting involved — to “go viral.” Whenever you’re creating a social media plan and relying on your consumers’ involvement, strive to lower the barrier to entry and allow as many people as possible to participate, while at the same time providing the requisite rewards for every level of participation.