In the comments section of the tweet, numerous brands responded with their own versions, quickly igniting a fire that spread across Twitter. But for these followers, not being first can have as little impact on building engagement as the original poster who parrots back content first.

“Move fast, hop on and buckle up”

Most of the recent one-word memes were posted within 12 hours of Amtrak’s first tweet, and some of the most viral were posted on CNN and of the Washington Post— came in less than an hour and a half. Their post shows that a timer counts down its relevance to consumers once a viral trend begins.

“Be prepared to be careless at all times,” Mason wrote. “If necessary, scrap plans and ignore social content his calendar. If it works for your brand, act fast, hop on and buckle up.”

Another way to successfully “hop on” a viral trend is to experiment with forms. That way, when the time comes, you’ll know if the viral opportunity makes sense to your audience. This is how Amtrak finally decided to enable his one-word meme.

“Our text-only tweets are [younger audiences]” Abrams wrote. “‘Trains’ is an iteration of a long list of experimental tweets.” Position An account created last month — “No idea. Just training less than 3 inches generated 36,000 likes. Like the one-word trend, this tweet relies on brevity and out-of-context tone, which Amtrak followers seem to agree with.

Putting a branded spin on memes can help you separate yourself from memes, especially when a large number of accounts are trending.Wingstop’s blatant tweet exemplifies this idea. The brand was originally “Wings” Tweet On the day one word trended viral, the post only got a few thousand likes because dozens of other people had already considered it at that point. But a few days later, Brand learned that the restaurant was nearly out of his four weeks supply of new chicken sandwiches in just six days. Wingstop saw an opportunity and jumped at it.

A Wingstop spokesperson told Ad Age:

This decision resulted in the brand’s best-performing Tweets and an influx of over 14,000 new followers.