social media

With developments like the launch of Twitter Moments and Snapchat covering breaking news, 2015 was the year social networks tried to establish some control over social media. While the platforms take different approaches to doing so, their underlying goal is the same: Gathering user-generated content before writers aggregate it themselves.

This past week of the top 10 in Nielsen’s Twitter TV Ratings of sports events, the No. 1 spot went to the 2015 NBA championship rematch of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. The game had 506,000 event-related Tweets sent in the U.S., with a unique audience of 6.7 million people. According to Nielsen, live tweeting makes up 57% of the weekly Twitter TV impressions, showing that social engagement peaks during a broadcast.

The Tribune-owned Fox affiliate is the overall social media winner in the country’s 35th largest market, where all three of the top spots belong to TV stations, according to Shareablee data.

This year saw a number of events — the terrorist attacks in Paris, earthquakes in Nepal, and continued police brutality — taking over the conversation across social media. Here’s Fast Company‘s roundup of the news moments that dominated Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat in 2015.

When it comes to social media, the Cox-owned ABC affiliate is ahead of all the other news outlets in the country’s ninth largest market in both social actions and fan followers, according to Shareablee data. Fox O&O WAGA ranks second.

The key to legacy news organizations reaching the coveted digital demo is to put their content where young people will find it, primarily social media. Even then, however, they must create content that resonates on particular platforms within social media.

Schurz Communications-owned CBS affil KWCH bests the social media market in Wichita-Hutchinson, Kan., according to Shareablee data, both in total social actions and fans followers, but Gray-owned ABC affiliate KAKE trails just behind.

The cable channel and digital media network is getting a trial run as a channel on Snapchat’s Discover feature, starting today. Fusion has had a presence on the international version of Discover since January, when it launched, but will get “a couple months” on the U.S. and U.K. edition.

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News host Greta Van Susteren is working on a book about social media. Van Susteren has a deal with Simon & Schuster for a guide […]

What makes digital content distribution so challenging is the staggering number of avenues that a piece of content needs to be sent along to reach a fan. Long gone are the days of building a single piece of content, running it on a network, and hoping fans watch. Key digital execs from the NBA, MLS, and Fox Sports shared their thoughts for how they get the most out of their video via social.

Today’s TV audiences often use social media while watching. But what share of Twitter impressions for TV programs are coming from live tweeting, as opposed to tweeting throughout the rest of the week?

The University of Missouri’s NBC affiliate in Columbia is using social media to produce a public affairs segment, uncovering new story ideas, angles and sources. “We’ve learned to really embrace the use of social media, not just as a place where you put your story when it’s done but the place where your story can start,” says Annie Hammock, the station’s  interactive director.

NBC O&O WSCV rules the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale local social media market in terms of overall social actions, according to Shareablee data, though Univision’s WAMR-FM crushes the competition with the market’s most fans/followers.

ABC/Disney-owned KABC is the clear winner among Los Angeles’ local social media according to Shareablee data, beating out all the competition in both total social actions and fans/followers. Tribune’s KTLA takes second in both categories.

Competing for users’ short attention spans, Snapchat, Instagram and their rivals are engaged in a feature-focused arms race. About a week after Instagram debuted Boomerang — a new app that loops 1-second videos — Snapchat is rolling out some video-editing features of its own. With the new “Speed Modifiers,” Snapchat users can post videos in slow-motion, fast-forward or reverse.

Futuri Media, a provider of interactive leveraging technology for media has added a number of new features and a new design for its social media intel system, TopicPulse.  Scanning Facebook, […]

Some of the most important real estate in presidential politics is actually right in front of your nose. Or under your thumbs — it really depends on how you log onto Facebook. The social network is now a key place for campaigns to advertise. One reason for that: It’s getting easier and easier for campaigns to target those ads to very specific, tailor-made audiences.

Taking a page from trend-setter Donald Trump, CBS News announced this morning it’s entered into a partnership with Twitter to create an “enhanced viewer experience” for its Nov. 14 Democratic debate.

TV networks are increasing the use of social media to supplement their program tune-in marketing. In 2016 and 2017, social media platforms will rise to a 5% share of all TV marketing dollars.

Traditional TV ratings may be weak for many new broadcast network shows — but many are scoring well when it comes to social media and general word of mouth. For example, New Fox shows have been earning high numbers so far through two weeks of the season in terms of “engagement” and “impact” and “responsiveness,” according to an Engagement Labs study.

New apps are propelling the rise of social television. With them, viewers are joining in a state of disconnected togetherness to revive TV’s live emotional power.

Olivia Pope came clean to the world about her relationship with the president on Thursday’s episode of Scandal, and fans went wild on social media.

Fox Television Stations-owned KDFW holds a clear lead in Dallas-Fort Worth’s social media scene based on data from Shareablee. The station has had nearly 9.2 million social actions in the last six months and is closing in on a million fans/followers. Its newsroom says the foundations for such a strong social platform go back nearly two decades before there was a “social” media.

For years, Facebook has wanted marketers for large brands to spend more on its social-media platform when planning out television-based, integrated advertising campaigns. On the eve of the Advertising Week in New York, the tech giant is introducing a purchasing product dubbed TRP Buying—which references the metric called target-rating points (TRPs). The TRP Buying system leans on Facebook’s partnership with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings division, which will verify how well the social site’s video ads perform in conjunction with TV spots.

Over the next two weeks, 58 primetime broadcast series will have their season premieres, meaning Twitter feeds will fill up with actors and producers of those shows talking about those season premieres. Although it’s still next to impossible to say whether social engagement drives linear ratings, networks wouldn’t even consider making social media an afterthought.

“Identifying and cultivating relationships with loyal authors could be powerful for TV networks and advertisers as they each look to maximize earned media driven by TV content and advertising,” according to Nielsen.

Social media activity about live TV programming ebbs and flows as each program airs, signaling, according to recent research, how engaged the general audience is with what they’re watching. But when we step outside the minute-by-minute activity, we often see that individual programs see relatively steady overall levels of social activity during live airings.

In Charleston, S.C., a horrific shooting in an African-American church and a vehement debate over the state’s Confederate flag and heritage have put a community on edge. Raycom-owned CBS affiliate WCSC has used its social platforms to bring fractured people together through civilized discussion, cementing its position in social media leadership in both total social actions and fans/followers.

Researchers predict $3 billion in ad spending for the next election cycle, but unless local media want to cede a big share of that to Facebook, they need to capitalize on the targeting resources available to them. Matthew Davis explains how local outlets can get a ground game with their present targeting capabilities, and what’s at stake if they don’t.

Users can now send up to 10,000 characters on private messages sent through Twitter, a fair amount more than the 140-character limit they’ve faced to this point. Twitter says this was a response to the company’s No. 1 request for changes.

Over the next month, Facebook plans to add new features to its “dynamic” product ads, including cross-selling abilities and Audience Network availability. In addition, businesses will soon be able to show products to users who have purchased a similar or complimentary item.

More bad news for Twitter: Facebook is working on a standalone breaking news app. Details are still vague and Facebook won’t comment, but early screen grabs have surfaced and users will be able to choose partnering publications to follow.

This week’s Social Scorecard looks at Denver, where Entercom-owned adult contemporary KALC-FM annihilates the local competition on social media actions with more than 20.5 million in the last six months and over 865,000 fans/followers. Tegna-owned KUSA-TV captures a distant second with just over 7 million social actions and more than 668,000 fans/followers.