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Yesterday was a normal Thursday… for some; not for fans of Bill Hicks however, and especially not for our very own Letitia Becher. Realising it would have been Bill Hicks’ 49th birthday and no one seemed to be making any noise about it she quickly got in touch with the people behind American: The Bill Hicks Story.

Who then, in turn, got the ball rolling by retweeting her,  which got Bill’s fanbase inspired to get the message spread further by getting in touch with the Twitterati.

It worked, Twitter royalty like Lauren Laverne

..and even Stephen Fry got involved, and from there, the message exploded…

..It exploded so much it became the 2nd* top trend in the UK, sat (quite rightly) along with #mademesmile…

it even made the Press in Austin, Bill Hicks’ hometown.

What touched Tish the most was that @billhicks_movie contacted Bill Hicks’ family who were really “pleased and excited” by the news. Tish said;

“As a huge Bill Hicks fan, I really wanted to create some awareness that it was his birthday. I really wanted people to know and the message couldn’t have taken off without the help of @billhicks_movie, @Bill_Hicks_RIP and @CateyScarlet. I have had such a huge smile on my face since it trended, because it just shows how many more people cared about him too.”

So how was all this achieved? First of all you need (in this case) is a cause worth bringing to people’s attention. Bill Hicks was loved by many, but loved by many more since his passing in 1994, within this newer fanbase things like his birthday may go amiss, so by bringing awareness through networks like Twitter is ideal to get the message out.

But how do you get the message out? What Tish did was to get in touch with the loudest voices within the fanbase, they then retweeted and spread the message further than Tish could have done on her own. Getting in touch with Twitter celebrities is a bit harder, as they tend to have huge amounts of people @Tweeting them it is easy for messages to get lost in their @Message streams. However if you have a group of you sending the same message, that #Hashtag has a much better chance of catching their eye. Once that message has been retweeted by them, then that’s the start, that’s where it really starts to gain momentum. Then just sit back and watch your topic trend…

Aside from just waiting to see your topic appear on the Trendslist there are a few other tools you can use to see how far you message is spreading; Trendsmap is one, you can see not only how big your #Hashtag is getting but also where people have mentioned it too. Topsy is another great service for seeing where messages originated from, who tweeted to create the spike, kind of an autobiography of a tweet.

*We had trouble sourcing a screenshot of it actually being in 2nd place, if you have one we’d be really grateful if you could share it with us.

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