Photo courtesY sYruP traP MaY 2015 BCBusiness 47
Gooey Goodness
how Syrup Trap, a bite-sized
vancouver-based huMour site,
is Making the Most oF its social
Media Following
s
peaking of translink, did you hear about
the company's new tiny bus program?
a satirical article posted last fall by
vancouver-based Syrup Trap –"translink unveils
tiny bus program"–hit 50,000 page views over
a four-month period, according to the humour
website's founder and editor, 25-year-old nick
zarzycki. how so high? it was shared 5,000
times on Facebook during that time. even
better was Syrup Trap's most popular piece to
date–"coyote $21,000 in debt after wandering
through university campus"–which reached
130,000 page views and 30,000 Facebook
shares between november 26 and February 5.
"easily more than three-quarters of our traffic
and activity comes from people sharing and dis-
cussing our pieces on Facebook," zarzycki says.
"as far as i'm concerned, the most dependable
way to get content in front of 18-to-30-year-olds
in canada is to get it shared by an eager audi-
ence on Facebook."
–Trevor Melanson
if not two people when it's
busy," Willis says. "We call it
the bullpen: two computers in
the middle of the call centre
for Twitter."
Rewind five years, to 2010.
While the Olympics resulted
in many lasting transporta-
tion legacies—the Canada
Line, the Sea-to-Sky highway—
the Games also encouraged
TransLink to try something
new on social. "We needed
to find a way to communicate
with a bunch of people coming
to the Lower Mainland who
didn't have any knowledge
of media here but needed to
know how to get to places on
transit. We thought, Let's use
our Twitter account." After
a successful pilot project,
TransLink decided to staff
Twitter full-time.
That st rateg y ea r ned
TransLink an A+ score this
past February in a ranking of
Twitter use among 10 North
American transit authorities,
with the Journal of the Ameri-
can Planning Association giv-
ing TransLink first place.
According to Willis, similar
organizations, such as the
City of Vancouver, are now
following TransLink's lead
and manning their Twitter
feed "almost 24 hours a day."
Something to keep in
mind the next time your train
breaks down at 10:30 on a
Sunday night.
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