By Joshua March

Television has always had a social element. The movement of TV to online has only given it a wider scope - the web is just a natural extension of the living room or water cooler. Now that viewers are shifting their activity to online channels such as the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4OD, they are also taking their conversations online with them.

Why is it important for broadcasters to engage with viewers in social media?

With much greater choice today, television channels don’t have the same control over viewing. TV on demand, not only available online but also on televisions directly, removes time restrictions on what people can watch. Making a new show a hit is not as easy when viewers can simply choose something else. Broadcasters must work even harder to keep up excitement around the regular release of new episodes and the surrounding discussion of what’s coming up next.

Social Media offers a great way to build awareness and loyalty in between shows and build anticipation for upcoming episodes. The social space widens the potential community beyond friends and family, creating a real opportunity for broadcasters to build a craze surrounding their latest programmes. People watch the shows that everyone is talking about, and this is where dedicated fan pages, which can amplify content (Facebook, Twitter and GetGlue, for example), can make all the difference.

So who is creating communities around social television content?

Using our engagement metric, IPM* we can understand how successfully a page is engaging with their fans, both with individual content updates and in general. We looked at a selection of popular current TV shows across the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to see who was effectively driving engagement with their viewers and how they were managing this.

*IPM (Interactions per Thousand) = number of interactions per thousand fans/followers at the time an update is posted.

When ranked by fan numbers, these pages follow quite a different order; but fan count isn’t everything. Hollyoaks, for example, has a large fan base but a low engagement score, whereas 10 O’Clock Live, our engagement winner, has the lowest fan count. Fans who don’t engage with you can’t help to create a community that will propel the popularity of your programmes. More fans don’t automatically mean greater success.

Channel 4

Channel 4 has some of the most and least engaging pages, but overall had the highest average fan size and IPM score. This was boosted by immensely popular pages for One Born Every Minute, Shameless and best of all, new show 10 O’Clock Live. What makes these programmes stand out from others is their personalised tone - the pages have character and serve a separate purpose to the channel’s programme announcer. They offer diverse and exclusive content, such as cast interviews, and invite their fans to engage with them through polls, questions and calls for opinions.

Several Channel 4 programmes that did not replicate the social conversation format of One Born Every Minute, Shameless and 10 O’Clock Live trailed behind with IPM scores well below 1 (the average for all being 1.93). Come Dine with Me seems to have fallen behind by failing to add extra value to its fans. Its updates replicate the end of show messaging on screen, calling viewers to apply as participants and to watch the next show. Hollyoaks is much more of a surprise - the page gives its viewers a whole range of interesting updates from show music to spoilers and Q&A with cast members. A possible explanation for the low engagement score could be the frequency of updates. Spreading interactions across many posts gives Hollyoaks less visibility in the interaction-driven Facebook newsfeed.

ITV

The ITV shows Dancing on Ice, ITV News and Lorraine all exceeded the average. Dancing on Ice is one programme which has made extensive use of social media for gaining interest. ITV use Facebook comment wall plugins throughout the show’s site. ITV pages post short snappy updates and introductions to linked content, often exclusive. Administrators of the Lorraine page call their fans to action, with “tell us what you think”.

BBC

The BBC has a few hit pages but is often absent in the social space. Many shows remain static community pages, or those set up by others, despite high fan numbers (Silent Witness, Holby City, Waterloo Road, The Graham Norton Show). BBC News, Doctor Who and the One Show, however, all do well with visual updates, proven to be especially effective in our research on engaging content. The Doctor Who page is kept fresh with interesting features such as ‘classic clip of the day’ and Doctor Who quizzes, offering fans an interactive space and fun ways to engage. Fan pages sourced from an existing community and cult following are easier to develop, but they still require work. Top Gear has the potential to harness an active fan base, but its page’s simple and repetitive links to the website arguably waste this social potential.

So what are the keys to success for broadcasters in social media?

• Strike a balance between flooding your page with updates and failing to post often enough to build up regular engagement. Keep content flowing between episodes.

• Craft your updates carefully - grabbing users’ attention in their overcrowded news feed is tricky. BBC News, which gives its updates interesting introductions, has a much higher engagement level than BBC World News which posts basic unadorned links to its site.

• Offer exclusive content. Reward your fans for giving you their time, and give them a reason to be there. This also builds interest around your programmes between shows and creates more involved, committed viewers.

• Demonstrate personality. Viewers don’t want an extension of the closing messages they hear at the end of a show, or read on a basic information website. Your fan page should be an active community, offering an opportunity to speak not only to each other, but with you.

• Call to action: lead your community. Ask your fans to engage with you and give them topics to talk about. Short questions are simple yet effective. Be more creative than suggesting fans watch the next episode.

• Find a tool to make your life easier - keeping on top of huge volumes of content is a major challenge.

British broadcasters are doing some great work, offering their viewers a valuable space to engage with their favourite programmes. Extending these practices to all shows could help cement social television as the new way to enjoy TV.

About the author and the company

Joshua March is the co-founder and CEO of Conversocial, a social media management system that helps business manage the increasing volume of two-way communication going through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Through in-depth engagement analytics and comprehensive comment management tools, Conversocial enables effective marketing distribution, moderation and customer support. Previously, Joshua was co-founder of iPlatform, the first official preferred Facebook application development company in the UK, and was chairman of the Facebook Developer Garage London from 2008-2011. Conversocial customers include ITV, Aviva, Tupperware, Tempero, Emoderation, FairTrade, London 2012 and more.

http://hello.conversocial.com/hello/