Weiswasser from the Discovery Network pointed out that as people are watching television, they are blogging about it, tweeting about it, and mentioning it on every existing social networking outlet. Discovery encourages this, because it builds hype for their programs, similar to water cooler buzz driving people to see a certain movie or eat a certain food. Aside from this, social media can also be used for research. Nobody tweeting about it? Probably not a good episode.
Not only does Discovery engage on social media, they have their popular programs make Facebook and Twitter accounts as well. This greatly increases their social media footprint, especially since a lot of people like a show, but maybe not the channel in general.
How else does Discovery communicate with social media?
- Chats
- Check-ins
- Talent Competitions, such as a competition of who can make an art piece that best represents the Discovery Network and to reward the winners
Discovery also rewarded people who tweet with a certain hashtag during an episode. They can get exclusive content that expires soon after the episode. Discovery, as many other companies have done, try to not only engage with users, but have users engage with each other.
Most importantly, Discovery tries to engage “influencers”, or people with a lot of followers that care about what is said (celebrities, politicians). After this, Discovery sends a T-shirt, hoodie, ect, and often times the influencer will tweet a picture of them wearing the paraphernalia.
In the end, engage on multiple social media channels because they drive traffic to the others).
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