Four sure-fire social drivers to boost TV audience engagement

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Four sure-fire social drivers to boost TV audience engagement

November 25, 2020

Never.no's Innovation Consultant Tom Bowers shares his thoughts on four social drivers that producers should consider when looking to create relevant content to increase audience engagement or a range of show formats.

Traditional and digital media has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, with a growing number of platforms and TV shows pumping out more content than ever before. Commissioners and producers are competing for viewers and are now challenged with creating more engaging, relevant content that keeps their audiences hooked for longer. With audience's attention-spans quickly fading, what social drivers can production teams exploit to create incredible audience engagement and TV viewers happy?

Create An Emotional Response

We all love talking about things we love!

Drive conversations from content that evokes a feeling and makes viewers want to react and get onto social media to react. Drama shows and other similar types of entertainment, such as sport, has a massive emotional driver attached to it.

Producers of these types of shows and events need to understand what evokes their audience's emotions and when to capitalise on a call to action to get people to send their opinions into the show. The best approach to do this is running social media in parallel with what's happening in the show. As the narrative develops on screen, their community management team will post cues related to the content and motivate viewers to respond with images, videos and messages, sharing their anger, sympathy, happiness, or even distaste via social.

Make Opinions Count

This revolves around talk shows, news and lifestyle programming predominantly. Talk about a hot topic, celeb trend, or a political argument during your show and create a call to action for viewers to get involved. Run live polls to gauge opinion and include the results within your live programming and post questions on your social. Viewers will engage and share opinion, which in-turn will motivate audiences to get involved in the conversation. Successful show producers know exactly what people will want to talk about, so do some research online to see what the hot topics are and jump onto the conversation.

Martin Lewis included social opinion during his ITV Show

Do you remember that time at Wimbleon?

Bringing Back Memories

Ideal for lifestyle and documentaries that look at past events, whether that's historical, sporting or political. Activating your viewer's memories is a great driver for engagement as they'll relate to past experiences or have a link to a historical event from a family member. Again, create a call to action on the live / pre-recorded content and on official social platforms to share memories, you may not want to include in the live programming, but creating a conversation on social will extend reach.

Imagine, you're building up to Wimbledon and want to create as much exposure as possible and entice potential tennis fans to watch the upcoming tournament. Run a classic replay show, showcasing the highlights of legendary encounter between Federer and Djokovic. Reach a wider audience by posting clips on social using the hashtag #JoinTheStory to encourage fans to share their memories of the previous event. Producers can then use this type of content within their shows to engage audiences and potentially create more tennis fans!

Making Shared Experiences

Finally, boost engagement through shared experiences. Live events are the ideal situation where everyone wants to get involved the more the merrier. Eurovision is a great example. We've seen Eurovision parties broadcast across the globe, featuring the most captivating content including videos and images of fans sharing their love for Eurovision. Individuals and groups are highly likely to get involved and show off their parties on social media, so it's a great opportunity for producers to capitalise on the shared experience and bring that content into the live coverage, creating a much more communal experience for everyone watching, bringing this into the show editorial will be showcasing how far reaching your event is and how well it is being received - giving on screen engagement payoff to the viewer.

Welcome to the party - create a shared experience

No One-size-fits-all

There isn't a one-size-fits-all for social engagement with every type of genre and show on TV, but by applying the four drivers to the DNA of your show this should help decide whether you should include social interaction as part of your strategy. If so, then you're on the path to a sure-fire way to producing captivating content that will keep the audience engrossed and engaged,

The key is that social engagement should enhance a viewers experience, not diminish or detract away from it. Social content woven into the on screen presentation for instance, doesn't always add value to the experience, but could be fuelling an active and engaging conversation in tandem to the main broadcast.

If you'd like to enhance your broadcast, streamed or branded content, then contact us now to arrange a demo.

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