WRAL Doc Makes Heavy Use Of Social Media

To measure immediate social engagement the station is using Social Mention, an online tool that provides a snapshot in real time.

“Social Mention allows us to really look at what’s happening right this minute and to measure your sentiment in positive, negative or neutral and see who your top users are,” says Shelly Leslie, creative director at WRAL.

During the broadcast, WRAL news staff will use TweetDeck, a dashboard that can follow several Twitter feeds at once, to respond to comments coming in, says Leslie.

The station is adding interactive elements to the website, using CoverItLive.

Inside that platform, the documentary team is planning more than 30 second-screen elements throughout the broadcast, like polls or quizzes. Results will pop up in the form of pie charts and bar graphs, and influential tweets and conversations can be highlighted.

Viewers can log into Facebook or Twitter and comment using the hashtag directly from that second screen landing page, powered by CoverItLive. Viewers can comment on their social networks outside of the landing page and still have their Tweets featured on the page, as long as they use the hashtag, says Leslie.

CoverItLive has a safety feature, allowing someone at the station to monitor Tweets coming in and filter out the ones using inappropriate language.

The graphics used in that second-screen landing page could end up on-air during the live cut-ins before and after commercials, says Leslie.

“We’ll be able to say that we asked this question on WRALSportsFan.com, and here are the results,” she says. “We’ll keep encouraging them throughout the show to use their second screen and go to the CoverItLive platform.”

And to get tweets up on air as quickly as possible, the station is using a solution called TVInteract, a new iPad app that was developed specifically for broadcasters. The beauty of the app, says Leslie, is that tweets don’t require any kind of graphics treatment.

“One of the challenges in broadcasting, if you’re going to put tweets on the air, is that you need to figure out what it will look like, and it requires graphics configurations, which takes time,” she says. “The app allows us to monitor the hashtag from the interface and decide which tweets you want to put to air from the app. It’s so simple.”

The app was developed by Jenni Hogan, a former anchor at KIRO Seattle, who was frustrated by the amount of steps it took to broadcast tweets live on air.

“As a TV talent, I noticed that putting out tweets was such a process, and by the time it was ready, sometimes it was too late,” says Hogan. “Twitter is fast and live, and a broadcaster can’t be held back by an existing workflow.”

Hogan’s app is currently in beta, but available for free in the iTunes App Store today. It’s currently being used by a handful of local broadcasters and small cable networks. An enterprise version that will let a station brand the tweets they throw to air is expected in early October and will cost $99 a month.

WRAL produces anywhere from four to six documentaries each year. Its most popular to date was “6,149 Days,” which told the story of Greg Taylor, the man who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1993 and spent more than 16 years behind bars.

Jim Rothschild, WRAL station manager, said “6,149 Days” made a big social splash — it trended locally on Twitter — but for tonight’s documentary, he’s hoping for a substantially bigger impact.

“If you’re not in over your head,” he says, “you’re not having fun.”