TORONTO – The real-time interactive nature of social networking presents both opportunities and challenges for digital news organizations, as their audiences increasingly take on the roles of contributors and critics. That was the message from digital media experts who participated in a panel discussion about the impact of social media on the broadcasting industry at the Digital Media Summit, held in Toronto this week as part of Canadian Music Week.
“Sports is one of the few remaining television properties that still is primarily live,” said Kenny Norton, digital marketing manager for sports broadcaster theScore. “The thing with sports and especially live events is that tomorrow doesn’t matter. It’s all about the moment.” Norton said The Score is constantly prepping for sports news yet to happen, such as the current watch on the Miami Heat’s 23-game winning streak.
“We’ll prep an infograph for the stats for that game, and we’ll prepare to unleash it at the end of the game so we can be timely and ready to do it at the proper time,” Norton said. He cited a recent example of how theScore was able to drive traffic to its website through social media. In a podcast interview with theScore, ex-Toronto Raptor Vince Carter said he entertained the thought of coming back to play in Toronto.
“We worked the Tweet interestingly… and raised the visibility… and before we knew it, it was a trend in Canada across the board,” Norton said. “We thought: People in Canada are going to go crazy about this, so we’re going to spend some money to bring them to our website.”
As director of digital news for Bell Media, Stephanie Wilson Chapin oversees the broadcaster’s CTVNews.ca, CP24.com and BNN.ca news properties. She said, from a news perspective, there are two kinds of live events – planned and unplanned. An example of a planned live event was the recent election of Pope Francis, which Wilson Chapin said required “tons of planning” as her organization worked out how they were going to handle the news in social media.
But it’s the unplanned live events that are the biggest challenge, Wilson Chapin said, especially if they involve a sensitive subject, such as the shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., in December. “During periods like that it’s an incredibly chaotic environment in the newsroom, mostly driven by social,” Wilson Chapin said, explaining that news often breaks in social media, with the first photos of live news often coming from that space.
“So we have to work really hard to make sure that we are mining for real and true information, and also filtering that for our folks who are on air,” Wilson Chapin said.
When it comes to disseminating news out through social media, Wilson Chapin said her organization assembles a social news desk where everybody knows the role they have to play to establish and maintain a dialogue with its audience. “I think sometimes we push information out and forget that actually people now expect us to have a dialogue with them. So it’s about triggering that social SWAT team and in advance everyone knowing what they’re supposed to do,” Wilson Chapin said.
On a cautionary note, Wilson Chapin said some people in an organization are not comfortable with or suited to participating in social media, and should be discouraged from doing so in those cases. “This may go against the grain, but for God’s sake, if you have people who are not comfortable tweeting, not comfortable on Facebook, tell them not to do it. In a news organization, it is a bit of a Wild West, and I’ve actually given permission to people not to, and actually begged them not to,” she added.
In addition, mistakes made in social media should be acknowledged, too. “I’m all about transparency. If you made a mistake, own up to it, talk about it openly in your company, and sit down together and decide how you’re going to avoid it again, so that everybody learns together.”
Norton said companies need to be wary of the social media platforms they jump into, especially if they have scarce resources. At theScore, Norton said his group was pressured by upper management to create a social media strategy for Pinterest, which he later discovered is more popular with women than men. “It’s predominantly a female social network, and we’re a sports company,” Norton said. He joked that posts about “nice jerseys” and photos of men without shirts on weren’t consistent with theScore’s other social networks.
One trend theScore has noticed is the dramatic increase in mobile traffic on its website, Norton said. “We have more mobile visitors to our website than desktop traffic now, which is crazy,” he said, adding media publishers today need to have mobile-optimized websites, because if the viewing experience isn’t good for smartphone users they will leave the site instantly. “So you really, really need to emphasize mobile first when you’re building your website.”
