While at the National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB) Conference this week in Las Vegas, I attended the session Building Audience Loyalty with Social Media featuring Rob Tercek, President of Digital Media for Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). I’ve been puzzling over the session ever since. The room was packed. I mean FULL. And it was not full for other sessions. Oprah is a below-average tweeter, so expectations were set with a note of irony. How would OWN advise this audience about social media?
To kick off the session Tercek reviewed a lengthy history of TV (again), the size of the TV viewing audience (yawn), and a notable quote from Winfrey: “Engagement is the new Entertainment.” We learned about some terrific things OWN is doing, driven by corporate values on empowering audiences and eradicating intolerance. OWN is to be praised and emulated for raising the bar on corporate responsibility.
TV’s gift to Social Media or Social Media’s gift to TV?
There appeared to be many journalists in the room, but a search four days after the session showed up only one item, a blog post from Josh Dickey at TheWrap. I agree with Dickey that Tercek’s points about the importance of social media rang “painfully obvious.” But even though TV is becoming a 2-way medium, it’s still a stretch to call TV the next great gift to social media. I see it the other way around: Social media tools fuel TV participation. Newly-launched Twitter Media says “Tweets drive TV tune-in,” and they have recent data from Oxygen Media as proof.
Back to the full room: I squirmed in discomfort as the presentation of the obvious dragged on. I felt intuitively that others in the room were also waiting for the “real” presentation to begin. I sensed that they had come to learn from an expert how big and small brands can leverage social media marketing tools and practices … with urgency!
When the audience questions began, I knew my instincts were correct. Tercek fielded questions about Twitter and Facebook. I don’t think there was even one question about TV. Most of the 30-somethings in the room started filing out early. I thought: What a missed opportunity! A captive audience, a full session. And the social media tools front and center on everyone’s mind aren’t covered.
4 “Do’s” for Social Media Spokespersons
When presenting or teaching about social media:
- Expect a full room.
- Don’t assume your audience is like yourself.
- Be sensitive to the broadest definitions and novice-level interest in the topic.
- Be a guide and steward of not just tools and formulas (“It takes 20 minutes to write a blog post and 5 minutes to set up a Facebook account,” said Tercek) – but of best practices and social media protocols that make Twitter and Facebook today good places to engage around your community, your values, and your brand.
What do you think?
VitaeVino 