What is the CBC’s Social Networking Strategy?
As social networks grow, and the time spent on these networks increases dramatically, it’s worth considering the CBC’s strategy on social networking sites.
First let’s look at some background on social networks. The number of people using social networking sites is increasing. A recent study in the U.K. found 80 per cent of that online population visited a social networking site in May. In March, Nielsen published a report that found that two-thirds of the global online population spent time on social networking sites or blogging sites.
But even more dramatic is the increase in the time spent on social networking sites. The Nielsen report said social networking sites now account for 10 per cent of the total time spent online – and it’s growing dramatically. The report says that “time spent on social network and blogging sites is growing more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth.”
Television networks in the United States are trying to capitalize on this trend by using social networks to promote their fall lineup in the summer, often months before their conventional promotional campaigns start. “TV networks are trying to determine whether promoting new shows earlier can bring them bigger audiences come September and October,” an AdAge article from a days ago says.
The U.S. television networks are using sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to post early peeks at upcoming shows. The idea is that this promotional material can build a community of die-hard fans that will translate into larger audiences in the fall. ”What we’re doing now gives us four months to try to get people to sample and come on board,” Joe Earley, a communication executive at Fox said.
Recently the CBC started to try to mimic that strategy with their fall launch communication plans. For instance the CBC created an official Facebook fan page yesterday. The idea behind that page is to do something similar to what NBC is doing with their network page on Facebook: to give the entire network a voice, highlight content, and provide an entry point to the various NBC shows.
Currently the CBC’s social network strategy is ad-hoc. It’s essentially a victim of its own success. CBC shows, and many CBC staffers have been early adopters on Twitter and Facebook, and as a result there are hundreds of different accounts with different agendas.
This doesn’t sit well with Jill Atkinson whose working on the communications strategy on social networks. “There are way too many CBC Twitter accounts,” she said, “the volume of CBC sites *is* massive, and should be culled.” Atkinson said there’s nothing wrong with individual shows having social networking accounts, but they need to reflect the CBC’s priorities, “not just because it’s a cool thing to do,” she said.
While she was digging around the various social networks Atkinson found that the CBC already had both a Facebook and Twitter account. Neither had posted anything. “We had a Facebook page with 400 plus followers, there was zero content on the page,” she wrote in an email “And we said ‘come on,’ what a missed opportunity.”
Atkinson wants to correct that. “The plan is to reflect… our television priorities and to create a community that acts as a conduit to the show’s individual promotional websites,” she wrote.
It’s an area that has lots of potential for community building and communication. Currently the CBC communicates primarily through newsletters, and although they can reach tens of thousands of readers, a newsletter once a week does not compare to a large Twitter account, like say Anderson Cooper’s, which has almost 300,000 followers, blasts out dozens of updates a week, and allows for back and forth conversations between the viewers and the show.
The trick is to balance the CBC’s adoption and innovation on these networks, without overloading the audience, “In a nutshell the whole point to doing this is to value add for the audience,” Atkinson said on the phone yesterday.
What are your thought on the CBC’s social networking direction? Are there areas we miss, stuff we need to work on, or converselly pull back on?
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There are many CBC Twitter accounts, but that allows for users to get only the information they want.
Do I really care about local Vancouver news if I live in Montreal? Not so much! Unless, of course, I have a personal interest, ie family, work contacts, previous hometown, etc.
A start would be to have your blog allow users to retweet or add this post to your facebook feed….
just saying.
Not an employee, but I agree with Naila here.
CBC is in desperate need of help! One account is good, but keep it organic with the individuals posting.
Just got a FB page yesterday? You’re only a year behind the times… Im sorry to say as a Canadian that CBC’s apparent lack of attention to what happens on the internet is only too stereotypical of most Canadians.
by individuals posting i mean keep the individual accounts
Too many Twitter accounts? Wha? That’s like saying there’s too much programming to choose from, too many shows, too many points of view.
As for strategy, it can’t be done by shutting down accounts, or policing around ‘corporate priorities’. You can do that in traditional media but not online. The internet eats institutions alive. Individuals are the voice of the CBC from now on.
The audience engages in social media because they want to talk to real people, not companies. Don’t turn twitter accounts and facebook sites into press releases.
Alistair, although there’s no share button on this blog, it’s already on Twitter, someone – not me – set up a Twitter account that runs off this blog’s feed: http://twitter.com/thecbc
Anyway I’m hoping to focus the discussion more on the CBC’s needs with social media instead of this blog’s, but I agree with your point, I should have a share button or something like that.
Many good point here. I should say that Jill’s comments are her own, and frankly I share them. From the point of view of a broadcaster the CBC has total Twitter overload.
But maybe that’s the point, Twitter ultimately is not a broadcaster, it’s a narrowcaster, it’s a person. So viva individuals, but how do you translate that as a corporation? That’s what we’re talking about.
the CBC already has many Facebook pages which have the devoted attention or numerous online ‘gardeners’, however it was not until yesterday that we tried to register the vanity url and feed a single CBC network fan page.
So the CBC corporate folks ignore Facebook andTwitter for years and now want to come along and police it? Sorry but those boats have sailed and the passengers on board are very happy with the content they are getting.
If this is what Jill has in mind, we’re in deep trouble:
http://www.theteamakers.com/2009/07/22/too-many-twitter/
Paul.
having one twitter account is fine, but having everyone who reads this page possibly posting this link with their own personal twitter accounts leads towards something more viral. http://www.jhuskisson.com/code-tidbits/share-on-twitter-link
Also using facebook connect allows users here to comment and directs those comments straight back to their respective facebook accounts, again, more users = more coverage.
http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php
If you think of the web as a way of generating conversation rather than just putting your information out, you are well on your way there.
Don’t bother.
Corporations, even ones as well liked as the CBC don’t fair very well on social media sites for the simple fact that they are not friends. See http://noodleplay.com/2009/05/26/friending-a-psychopath/
Also while people are connecting to each other online, they are not necessarily connecting to corporations. UK study did not mention what those users actually did on Facebook.
That is not to say that the CBC shouldn’t be interested in increasing their communications with their audience or that there isn’t a place for effective feedback but Facebook isn’t it.
Friending people is a social negotiation, you spend social capital when you friend someone. Ever have someone follow you on twitter and see they follow 8,078 people? Chances are you won’t follow them back because there is no way they read everyone’s tweets, their “friendship” is not worth much. However, if you could only follow 5 people then you would think about it carefully and the value of that connection would increase.
The value proposition of the CBC is information. I will follow the CBC news tweets because I am a news junkie, I don’t follow sports through because I am not a sports fan. One has a good value proposition for me and one does not.
If you look at the NBC facebook page they have 3,259 fans but not a lot of activity beyond people asking for canceled shows to come back. They obviously don’t maintain it very well.
If the CBC is going to invest time and money in social media, it should look what others have done and critically evaluate the effort, not just do something because everyone else is doing it.
I am a CBC journalist who started a Twitter account on my own initiative. I use it in my role as the lead political reporter in New Brunswick to send headlines, live updates and story links to a growing list of followers (350 right now, a decent number for New Brunswick).
I find it ideal because it gets news out quickly, extends our brand to a new audience, and takes very little time to maintain and update. I hope that any “culling” doesn’t throw out the good with the bad.
Facebook connect is already enabled. it’s on the right sidebar beside the posts.
I love the Twitter link you sent. I’m looking it over now.
Alistair, the code works nice. I put it in. I wish it actually sent out a bit.ly url instead of the WP permalink, but beggars can’t be choosers. Maybe there’s a plugin that does that?
We have no regular ongoing promotional support from CBC for our Victoria station’s programming. So we created a Twitter account to publish daily promos about upcoming interviews and features. Would a single CBC Twitter account promote what’s coming up on our On The Island morning show?
…I thought not.
ust wondering why these posts have no indication of time/date?
This post could be 2 days or years old. Might be nice to give some chronological context. Especially for posts that have a Part I, Part II component – what is the time differential?
Alistair, the date is right at the top of the post.
“Alistair, the date is right at the top of the post.”
Actually, it isn’t – that’s only on the homepage (and even there there’s no time). Individual posts have nothing, nor do the comments.
Paul, oh I see what you’re saying.
So a few links for you:
For your posts:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Meta_Data_Section
In your Comment Template:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/comment_date
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