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TV Shows & Social Media

October 14, 2011 By 3 Comments

The following is a guest post written by Lisa Skrezec, a Social Media Specialist and Account Manager at tcg. Her background in marketing has sparked her interest in the entertainment, fashion and social media world.

The only thing I love more than Facebook stalking and tweeting all sorts of outlandish hashtags, is television. When my two favorite things overlap, well, I couldn’t be any happier! Between the hours of 8pm-11pm you can find me sitting on the couch with my laptop tweeting away – but apparently I’m not alone.

Live-tweeting television shows is not only fun to partake in and track, but it has a proven positive impact on the ratings. The best way to reach your audience is to do what they’re doing, and they sure as hell are tweeting and Facebooking! Below are five examples of television shows that have adopted the live-tweeting trend and engage with their fans on a weekly basis:

  1. #JerseyShore: Oh yes, our favorite fist pumping “juice heads” have without a doubt adopted social media. They dominate the trending topics every Thursday at 10pm EST and each cast member live tweets and asks questions to their fans. 9 our of 10 times @itsthesituation WILL retweet you!
  2. #TheVoice: This past summer, NBC’s hit new show “The Voice” not only had its 3 judges live tweeting each show, but they even had a social media room! Fans would tweet questions for the contestants using #TheVoice and they would all be answered in the exclusive, state-of-the-art social media room. How cool is that? Needless to say, #TheVoice was always the number one trending topic.
  3. #Bachelorette: @ChrisBHarrison hosts the long running show “The Bachelor”/”The Bachelorette”, and as the seasons progress, Chris gets more and more involved with connecting his show’s fan base through social media. Throughout the entire 2 hour show, Chris is actively tweeting and answering questions, many of which reveal “behind-the-scenes” fun facts. (For example, did you ever want to know if the contestants pick out their own clothes? Well someone asked, and Chris said nope!)
  4. #Survivor: @JeffProbst, the host of Survivor, is a social media guru! He too live-tweets each show, but he has recently joined Tout. Tout is a video status update — essentially Twitter meets YouTube. Fans tweet him questions during the show, and he answers them in a Tout. Not only do I look forward each week to his video responses, but I’m excited to see how Tout is perceived by social media users…
  5. #SonsofAnarchy: Last, but most certainly not least, is @SutterInk. Kurt Sutter, the creator, writer and producer of Sons of Anarchy has explored ALL aspects of Social media, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogspot. Kurt is quite possibly the most honest and uncensored person on Twitter. He constantly stays connected with his fans, which certainly helped him achieve a 20% bump in viewers from season 3 to the season 4 premier.

Below is a graph that demonstrates the relationship between online buzz and TV ratings. Clearly social media has it’s biggest impact prior to a show’s premiere, which is expected, but it also does hold a great deal of value throughout the season (source):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social media gives fans and followers the opportunity to connect to these shows/contestants/creators on a more personal level. I look forward each week to tweeting all those mentioned above, and nothing makes me happier than getting a response! I am very glad to see television shows taking part of new age media – keep it up!

Do you follow television shows in the social media universe – have you gotten an EPIC retweet? I’d love to hear all about it!

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Rediscovering Web 2.0

September 30, 2008 By 3 Comments

I have not been a fan of the term Web 2.0, mainly because of the many instances where it has been taken out of context. Through revisiting the man who coined the phrase, Tim O’Reilly I have rediscovered that his thoughts and concepts around this phrase not only make sense, but puts forward ideas and directions I can and do subscribe to. Thank you Jeremiah Owyang for your blog What’s after the Social Web? for pointing me back to Tim.

I am not going to venture into a definition of Web 2.0. It is not my term to tamper with. Besides, it would be difficult to reduce the definition to a few words and phrases, not to mention the possibility of misinterpretation if it is read by someone who doesn’t truly appreciate the phenomenon that it is.

This is how O’Rilley defines Web 2.0:
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.(This is what I’ve elsewhere called “harnessing collective intelligence.”)

In one of Tim O’Reilly’s latest blogs Why Dell.com (was) More Enterprise 2.0 Than Dell IdeaStorm, his vision of Web 2.0 is clearly laid out.

It is important that people get this because it really puts the term social media into perspective. The word ‘social’ often throws us off. We immediately think of outward facing dialogue, collaboration and social connections as being at the forefront of social media. However, it is often the product of the dialogue, collaboration and connections that provide the real added value of social media. Just like Tim O’Reilly’s Google example in his blog where google’s intelligence is only made possible through the way in which it organizes and uses content that is produced by the collective.

A bit of poetic license here as I attempt my own example. Imagine a computer reseller who allows customers to build their own specs online. To facilitate this they have some social media elements on the site that allow users to discuss the merits of various components. They can debate, discuss, and ask advice from each other. The data (conversations) are then monitored with key words and phrases, actively searched so as to provide the individual users with immediate information about the components they are talking about. This can include descriptions, user reviews, costs and options to select, add to your basket, add to your build, etc. Conversations about which graphics card works best with which processor for example can result in bundled deals, further reviews, alternative suggestions, etc.

Beyond this, users movements can be tracked and their search behavior monitored so to allow the computer reseller to understand real customer preferences versus their assumptions about customer preferences. Tracking could help with their supply chain management, trend watching and configurations for the standardized commodity boxes they sell to computer stores, allowing for real time adjustments to product offerings and market understanding in an industry where constant changes do not have the luxury of quarterly marketing reviews.

It is with this understanding and vision that we have built SocMeTM Through integrating social media elements with CMS, LMS, analytics and measurement tools, websites are turned into intelligent business tools that are applied in relation to a company’s unique business rules, goals and needs.

Conversations, collaboration and gathering data are all vital, but so too are how we handle and use that data. The trend is to be fixated on the well-known external facing social media properties out there, rather than thinking how social media tools and applications can bring us a competitive advantage.

For example, people talk about using twitter as a business tool rather than thinking about creating a searchable organizational database of collaborative conversations. Yet it goes beyond this. How we organize, manage, analyze and use that database of collective conversations is key.

http://twitter.com/ajmunn

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