Case Study
#BTS_Butter spread Twitter with 300M Tweets globally in one month
“Butter,” the new single from 21st century pop icons, BTS, melted Twitter this spring, with over 300 million Tweets related to the song generated by people all around the world, from April 24th to May 23rd, 2021. A whopping 31 million of these Tweets were generated in a single day when BTS released “Butter” through the group’s official Twitter account on May 21st, with five million Tweets generated in the first hour.
Fans from around the world posted congratulatory Tweets for the group, including celebrities, brands and corporations. On the day of launch, the majority of Tweets came from the Republic of Korea, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, Thailand, India, and Peru. In addition, multiple hashtags such as #BTS_Butter, #BTS, #방탄소년단, #BTSBackWithButter, #BTSArmy, and #SmoothLikeButter topped trends around the world.
Twitter designed custom emojis for the launch, with the hashtag #BTS_Butter generateing a heart-shaped yellow butter logo to symbolize the group’s new song. The BTS and ARMY logos appear in yellow for the hashtags #BTS, #방탄소년단, and #BTSArmy. The hashtag #Got_ARMY_Behind_Us launched on the same day, as a way to express gratitude for ARMYs, which attracted global attention from fans.
The performance of “Butter” was first unveiled at the Billboard Music Awards (BBMAs) on May 23rd, 2021, which also attracted attention on Twitter. At the BBMAs, BTS was honored with awards in four categories: Top Social Artist, Top Duo/Group, Top Selling Song, and Top Song Sales Artist. BTS has set the record for winning the award for Top Social Artist for five consecutive years, after first winning the award back in 2017.
Tweets congratulating the group on their awards poured in from around the world, with 14.4 million Tweets generated during the three hour airing of the BBMAs. In response, BTS, known for communicating closely with their fans through Twitter, thanked fans with a Tweet reading: “Thank you very much to ARMYs for giving us the honor of winning all four nominations.” To date the Tweet has received over 294,000 Retweets and over 800,000 likes.
For more K-pop conversations, check out #KpopTwitter.