March Madness Is Taking Over Social Media
By Todd Grossman
The full (64 field) March Madness tournament officially starts today, but social media has been in a tournament frenzy since Sunday when the brackets were revealed. More than 600,000+ mentions of March Madness, NCAA Tournament or related terms have been recorded across all social media in the past week.
Mentions of March Madness have spiked up over 300% since the tournament teams were finalized on Selection Sunday. The biggest peak came between 6-7pm ET during the CBS live selection show.
The hashtag #MarchMadness has already been used more than 150k times over the last 7 days. The other major hashtag being used in the buildup was #SelectionSunday which has been used 113k times over the last 7 days, not far off the main March Madness hashtag.
[Tweet “”Celebrating the Northwestern selection into the tournament with the infamous ‘Elaine dance.'””]
But who is going to win it all? According to social media, the early leaders out of the gate for most mentions are: North Carolina with more than 26,000+ mentions since Sunday, Kentucky with 24,000+, Kansas with 13,800+, Duke with 13,600+, Villanova with 13,389+, followed by Florida and Michigan with approximately 11,000+ each. Syracuse, which did not make the field, a surprise to some, logged more than 8,000 mentions.
March Madness – Social Media’s Favorite Teams
One trending theme is the name of actress Julie Louis-Dreyfus, after she tweeted as her Seinfeld character Elaine celebrating the Northwestern Wildcats selection into the tournament with the infamous “Elaine dance.” Louis-Dreyfus is a graduate of Northwestern and her son is a walk-on player for the Wildcats basketball team. And Northwestern even shows up on the list of top teams being discussed, with 8,700 mentions.
We're going to the dance, boys! @NUMensBball making history! #proud #B1GCats #poundtherock #NCAA @marchmadness pic.twitter.com/TpuoqtvxRV
— Julia Louis-Dreyfus (@OfficialJLD) March 12, 2017
Todd Grossman is the CEO of Talkwalker, a social data intelligence company.