Television marketers: You have your work cut out for you today in maximizing audience social engagement, but aligning your talent community with technology is the (not-so) secret ingredient for success.
In a fragmented media world of numerous content platforms, the “peak TV” programming onslaught, and on-the-go audiences watching when and where they want, it’s difficult now to get the right mix of social content to your fans when they want it, and keep them tuned-in and wanting more.
Behind-the-scenes, it’s just as challenging to keep up with the demands and pace for creating and distributing the social content needed to satisfy these hungry consumers. Tasks such as managing:
- global show launches
- cross-platform content for multiple networks
- real-time conversations around live viewing
- passionate online fandoms
Audiences are voraciously consuming content about the TV shows they love, and they’re seeking out TV-related social content as events happen. You need to be there when and where they do.
How can you accomplish all this?
Through technology that activates your talent community to amplify and create timely, relevant content.
Yes, your on-screen stars are likely on social media already, racking up impressive follower counts on various platforms and posting personal photos of their lives on- and off-camera—whether they’re doing that directly or indirectly through their management or social teams. They may be participating in live show chats and sharing updates about series premieres, news and renewals.
But what if you could take their social activity one giant step further?
What if you could truly leverage their star power and influence by making it easy for talent or their teams to instantly amplify large volumes of your curated show content, and create their own authentic content to share with their fans (and yours) around the globe? At any time and from any place.
And not only on-screen performers, but the accomplished crew members and creative teams behind the scenes as well—each with their own followers and compelling perspectives on every stage of the production process.
Imagine if you could do all this AND simplify your communication channels and social content workflows at the same time.
Personalized communication and relationships with your entire talent community would improve. Time-sensitive and complex promotional efforts would be a breeze. Ultimately, your fan engagement and ratings would soar.
With the right technology that gives you an easy, secure way to harness your talent and support your social teams, you can do it all!
As Nielsen Social president Sean Casey has noted, “On-screen TV talent, and even those behind the cameras, can have massive followings, especially on social media. How they leverage those audiences on social can have an impact on who and how many are watching their show.”
The time to adjoin talent and technology for social engagement success is now. Yet, there are still many challenges in elevating talent activity and managing the work needed to maximize social content reach so fans can see and engage with it when they want.
The Complexities of Social Content
Quickly scaling extensive collections of engaging, relevant social content in collaboration with all types of creative talent—casts, showrunners, costume designers and beyond—has become an imperative for marketers and producers everywhere to connect with audiences.
A Nielsen study fielded at the start of the 2018-19 television season found that TV talent initiated about a quarter of all social posts around series and specials programming and garnered even higher engagement levels.
The ability of these creative stakeholders to actively share social content and interact with fans helps ensure their shows survive and thrive in an era when there are nearly unlimited entertainment options but minimal time to show a return on audience interest and programming investment.
However, social teams are facing numerous hurdles in keeping up with the requirements and management of social content, streamlining communication across people and properties, and working with show talent to maximize content distribution opportunities across channels. These include:
- Large volumes of content – organizing, curating and distributing mass amounts of social content assets for multiple shows every day, and integrating with existing digital asset management systems
- Disconnected communication – interacting with cast and crew when they’re on-set or on-the-go, savvy social users or not, and posting directly or indirectly through their reps
- Error-prone processes – managing multiple asset formats and links without workflow breakdowns
- Complicated content sharing – streamlining disparate tools such as FTP, email and text to get show content to the right people and push it out to social channels quickly
- Continuous content creation – sourcing ongoing, relevant and timely content both in-season and out, and not breaking the budget while doing it
- Measurement gaps – analyzing how content performs to make better strategic decisions
The work involved in dealing with all of these challenges for one show alone can be taxing; yet today, many social marketers in the industry are juggling multiple series and networks that are airing content simultaneously.
In light of all this, many teams are turning to technology to solve these pain points and automate processes.
They’re finding that Greenfly’s advanced social content management and distribution platform is enabling them to transform workflows, talent collaboration and audience social engagement at scale.
The Right Technology to Activate Talent
The Greenfly platform makes it possible for your social team to activate talent around content like never before, and streamline your entire social content workflow.
Via one central hub, Greenfly can automatically ingest content from multiple sources (e.g. Getty Images, Box, photographers, etc.) into organized folders (Greenfly Galleries) for immediate or future distribution to talent and staff such as publicity teams. Galleries can be easily accessed and shared by each personality or their reps on the fly. As content is added to Galleries, participants are immediately notified of the incremental assets so they can leverage on social or otherwise. In a few simple clicks, marketers can push out this sorted content, see a rapid return on requested actions, and watch that content soar across social platforms.
Social marketers can also segment talent into groups and shows or networks into channels. In this way, teams can better manage their specific content, communication and approval needs independently, and automate these operations. They can also efficiently interact with one or many personalities at one time via messaging and requests initiated within the Greenfly mobile app—eliminating the need for lengthy text and email chains, FTPs and spreadsheets; mitigating the risk of errors; and enabling them to stay connected amidst demanding schedules.
Teams can collaborate with all of these communities to request that ingested content be shared to their social channels. They can also request new authentic photos and videos be created for network and show social channels. This shared and created content can include everything from sneak peek images of upcoming episodes and tune-in promos to red carpet interview clips and behind-the-scenes videos shot during productions in exotic locales.
In addition, your social teams have instant access to performance analytics; they can see who is sharing content, when they’re sharing it and how that content is performing on social channels—to help make more strategic content decisions going forward.
A Social Engagement Success Story
Greenfly has helped social teams across a suite of top U.S. television networks leverage the social reach of their show personalities to drive fan engagement. The teams can ingest large amounts of network promotional content, organize and curate it within Greenfly Galleries, and then seamlessly feed their talent community thousands of pieces of the best, most timely content to be shared on their personal social channels. They also request authentic photos and videos from the talent to be used on network social channels.
This streamlined process has resulted in an uptick of millions of likes, comments and shares across social platforms. Show casts directly use the Greenfly mobile app to share network content and create their own photos and short videos as well. They share tune-in promos and behind-the-scenes clips, send public video messages of support to each other throughout the year, celebrate special moments on the red carpet, participate in Instagram Stories and takeovers, and much more. The teams can quickly see which personalities have shared content and how the content has resonated on social platforms. And fans everywhere get the content they want, when they want it.
By activating your talent community with content and supporting them with advanced technology, your television marketing team has all the right ingredients to maximize audience social engagement.
Are you looking to amplify your entertainment content on social media? Contact us at Greenfly.
