In Pittsburgh, you’d expect the Pittsburgh Penguins’ drive to winning the NHL Stanley Cup to be a major influence in social engagement on Facebook. But it’s another animal altogether, algorithms, that figures prominently in WPXI’s playbook for success on Facebook. “Facebook is algorithm based,” says Amy Hanford, WPXI’s digital content manager, and understanding how those […]
In Pittsburgh, you’d expect the Pittsburgh Penguins’ drive to winning the NHL Stanley Cup to be a major influence in social engagement on Facebook.
But it’s another animal altogether, algorithms, that figures prominently in WPXI’s playbook for success on Facebook.
“Facebook is algorithm based,” says Amy Hanford, WPXI’s digital content manager, and understanding how those algorithms work is contributing to WPXI’s success in social media actions.
WPXI, Cox’s NBC affiliate in The Burgh, leads the market in social media actions over the last six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee.
WPXI has more than 5.3 million actions on social, 34% of the total engagement generated by the DMA with more than 15.8 million social actions.
WPXI led in actions per post with 276, and also had the most actions on Instagram with almost 52,000 actions.
CBS O&O KDKA led in Twitter actions with almost 130,000 actions.
Hanford says the station’s success on social media is knowing what viewers want and what they relate to and then making sure that’s what they post.
“They want something that they can interact with,” says Hanford.
And what did WPXI’s users react to the most recently?
The Penquins of course.
“We Facebook Lived the Penguins parade. It had an extremely far reach,” says Hanford.
https://www.facebook.com/wpxi/videos/10154438773826615/
https://www.facebook.com/wpxi/videos/10154557571801615/
But it’s not just the NHL Penquins that helps WPXI win social media in Pittsburgh, Hanford says, but also algorithms, a formula central to how Facebook works.
According to Hanford, Facebook’s algorithms determines when a post will show up in a users feed, an important factor when you’re trying to use Facebook to drive viewership to your TV newscasts.
“So something that I post this morning, the hope here is that it would show up in somebody’s feed before the newscast comes on.”
One determination that ranks high in Facebook’s algorithms is Facebook Live.
“One reason Facebook Live works well for WPXI is that many users have opted to be notified when their station goes live,” says Hanford.
“For example, in Pittsburgh we had a fire. A restaurant that’s well known here, so we went Facebook Live from the scene.”
https://www.facebook.com/wpxi/videos/10154473637536615/
But using Facebook Live is not enough in itself. A key ingredient, says Hanford, every time WPXI uses Facebook Live is value.
“We have a management structure here that we follow to make sure that what we’re doing is offering value when we go live. We don’t just go live to go live. There’s a strategy behind it.”
Interactions between people in the WPXI newsroom and its users “is also another strategy that works well” for WPXI, says Hanford.
“The pipeline to Pittsburgh was an investigative piece that we spent a lot of time on,” says Hanford.
https://www.facebook.com/wpxi/videos/10154493190231615/
“We had a specialist come into the station and answer questions on Facebook Live after the newscast if they wanted more information about that story or had questions.”
https://www.facebook.com/wpxi/videos/10154493524516615/
Changing weather conditions also ranks high in social interactions for WPXI’s Facebook users.
“Any time we’re in a weather event, we try to go Facebook Live as much as we can because the bottom line is that we always want the viewer to know that we are there for them.”
https://www.facebook.com/wpxi/videos/10154270736036615/
Listening to what the users say on Facebook also helps determine what WPXI news viewers see in their newscasts.
“Facebook is an ongoing research project that will never end. Reading the comments helps us understand our audience. It allows us to make some choices on what news we’re covering.”
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