Social media activity for TV shows is primarily used by viewers to keep preferred shows strong. According to a new study from TVGuide.com, 76% of people say the primary reason for their social media activity is to "keep my favorites on the air." This data is up from a 66% level in 2011. TVGuide.com conducted the study in partnership with Social TV Summit. Almost all of those who make comments on social media platforms -- 95% -- post their remarks after watching a show. This is way up from the 70% level a year ago. TVGuide.com now says 40% make comments during a show and 53% before a show. Big events pull in more social media interactivity. Before the Super Bowl, 62% of viewers intended to voice their opinion. Almost all of those -- 58% -- actually did. For entertainment awards shows, the social media activity-versus-intent was greater: 57% of those intended to comment on the Grammys and Oscars and 80% actually did. When it comes to using social media, more are interested in what other people are saying, versus saying something themselves. Thirty-three percent report "they wanted to say something about the event," while 69% "wanted to see what others were saying." Social activity for this survey included posts, status updates, check-ins and comments on social networks, fansites, official network sites, and entertainment sites and apps, such as TVGuide.com.
Social media activity for TV shows is primarily used by viewers to keep preferred shows strong. According to a new study from TVGuide.com, 76% of people say the primary reason for their social media activity is to "keep my favorites on the air." This data is up from a 66% level in 2011. TVGuide.com conducted the study in partnership with Social TV Summit. Almost all of those who make comments on social media platforms -- 95% -- post their remarks after watching a show. This is way up from the 70% level a year ago. TVGuide.com now says 40% make comments during a show and 53% before a show. Big events pull in more social media interactivity. Before the Super Bowl, 62% of viewers intended to voice their opinion. Almost all of those -- 58% -- actually did. For entertainment awards shows, the social media activity-versus-intent was greater: 57% of those intended to comment on the Grammys and Oscars and 80% actually did. When it comes to using social media, more are interested in what other people are saying, versus saying something themselves. Thirty-three percent report "they wanted to say something about the event," while 69% "wanted to see what others were saying." Social activity for this survey included posts, status updates, check-ins and comments on social networks, fansites, official network sites, and entertainment sites and apps, such as TVGuide.com.
Viral video is a hit or, mostly, a miss proposition. But socially distributed video, by contrast, is continuing to deliver results for many brands. The latest marketer to make a play in social video is Puma, which is enjoying promising results from a recently launched 90-second video that’s already racked up more than one million views. The video — sort of like a short film — focuses on the benefits of living life by going out and hanging out with friends rather than watching reality TV on the couch. Social video distribution platform Sharethrough distributed the videos across the Web in what it calls native advertising placements, meaning “well-integrated placements on social publisher sites that are choice-based and sold on engagement-based pricing.” That strategy can drive earned media through paid media. The result of the campaign was a higher than average rate of social engagement and more than 8,300 total social engagements in the first three weeks of the March campaign, said Chris Schreiber, VP of Communications at Sharethrough. The campaign ran on sites such as such as Buzzfeed and The Awl. Sharethrough measures social engagement through actions viewers may take after watching the video in its video player. Viewers can take actions such as tweeting, copying the URL, LinkedIn Share, and Facebook Like. Sharethrough then optimizes the campaign based on where the highest levels of social activity are coming from.
“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed… In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’” –from Genesis 2:8-17 (New International Version) The world is full of temptations. According to the Bible, that’s how the world has been since week one. Today, temptation is more accessible than ever, so it’s hardly surprising that some institutions are trying to regulate how their members use the Internet. Yet exceptions can be made, and in one prominent case, it was a brand that inspired a loophole. According to a slew of reports originating from crownheights.info, the private, all-girls Beth Rivkah High School in Brooklyn told students that it would soon enforce a rule against using Facebook. According to the report, “Every girl in the 11th grade who possessed a Facebook account – about half the girls in each class – was individually removed from class and given a slip of paper with an ultimatum: delete the account entirely and pay a $100 fine, or face expulsion from the school.” The main beef (brisket? corned beef?) Beth Rivkah has with Facebook is that using it violates the Jewish code of “tznius,” or “modesty.” The Facebook ban is thus a perfectly rational call on the part of the educators. Social media is generally the antithesis of modesty, as it encourages talking about yourself ad nauseam, while continually monitoring what everyone else is up to. The book “Alone Together” by Sherry Turkle is full of anecdotal evidence to support the school’s concerns. Consider this conversation Turkle had with a teenage boy: “’It is a waste of time,’ he says, ‘to use Facebook messaging’ because these messages are like e-mail, private between the correspondents. ‘They will do nothing for your image.’ [What’s] essential is ‘to spend some time every day writing things on other people’s walls so that they will respond on your wall.’” This obsession with public messaging becomes the teenager’s constant struggle of constructing a creation myth about himself multiple times daily. He is constantly forging his identity – an effort that takes far longer than a mere six days, with no Sabbath to provide a day of rest. The high school is dealing with far more than immodesty; it has the added burden of preventing students from acting like the Creator. As the Tower of Babel story shows, there’s only room for one Creator. This Facebook ban alone then is hardly newsworthy. It could have stayed a private matter. One person commenting on CrownHeights.info took such offense to the story itself, exclaiming, “I understand that a school would do something like this, but I DO NOT understand why ANY website would post something like this!! To make it known does not make it right!” What transformed this non-event is a twist best covered by The Algemeiner. It turns out that school administrators sent out a mass mailing to parents last year after Kohl’s launched a contest where people could vote to choose which 20 schools would each receive a $500,000 donation. Beth Rivkah’s message stated, “Dear Parents, although the policy of our school is not to allow the use of Facebook and it remains the policy of our school not to use Facebook, after consulting with Rabbonim [rabbis)] due to the financial situation of the school, it was decided to make an exception. We are asking parents and alumni to vote for our school in the Kohl’s Facebook Contest.” Beth Rivkah is hardly the only school to have sought some justification to participate. Jewish schools performed exceptionally well, with many Christian academies joining them in the top ranks. The challenge for Beth Rivkah and any other school banning Facebook is that this wasn’t a typical contest entry where one registered, filled out a form, and never returned. As soon as one joins Facebook, most people instantly receive friend requests from familiar and long-lost connections. Facebook suggests other people to befriend. Then there’s the contest itself, where the real value wasn’t in voting but in convincing all of one’s friends to vote. For people who hadn’t used Facebook before, they learned several important lessons: 1) Facebook can’t be entirely bad if there is at least one positive reason to join it. 2) Brands can create a reason to participate in social media. 3) Social media can bring people together to achieve positive outcomes for their communities. Can’t you just picture Pandora’s box opening? Communities that were told never to use Facebook were instead lured in to participate in corporate-sponsored philanthropy. People had to sign up, become a fan of a brand, and spread the word to everyone they could. These new recruits were thus trained to be missionaries, preaching the gospel of Facebook. Most uses of Facebook aren’t so noble. Teenage girls probably aren’t going on the site to further their religious studies, donate to charities, or comfort ailing orphans and widows as per their religion’s commandments. Yet when an institution bans Facebook except for times when it could provide some tangible benefit, its members will come away with one indelible lesson: you’re damned if you use social media, and you’re damned if you don’t.