Rarely does one media outlet dominate the social media scene in any market as Raycom’s CBS affiliate WTOC does in Savannah, Ga. WTOC has almost four times the number of actions than its nearest competitor. Find out what WTOC is doing on Facebook that has made the station so dominant. WTOC dominates the social media […]
Rarely does one media outlet dominate the social media scene in any market as Raycom’s CBS affiliate WTOC does in Savannah, Ga. WTOC has almost four times the number of actions than its nearest competitor.
Find out what WTOC is doing on Facebook that has made the station so dominant.
WTOC dominates the social media actions in the market over the last six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee.
WTOC has almost four times the number of actions than its nearest competitor.
WTOC has almost 1.2 million actions on social, 55% of the total engagement generated by the DMA (No. 91), with more than 12.1 million social actions.
WTOC was first in actions per post with 161 and it also led the market on Instagram with nearly 27,000 actions.
SavannahNow.com led the market on Twitter with almost 17,000 actions. It’s the site of the city’s daily newspaper, The Savannah Morning News, which is owned by Morris Communications.
Sarah Smith, WTOC’s digital content manager, says one reason WTOC is so dominant on Facebook is staffing.
“WTOC just simply has more resources and a bigger staff than any other station in the market and that is to our benefit.”
But Smith says the station’s strong Facebook performance is more nuanced than just more staffing.
“One of the advantages we also have is that we’re the legacy station in the market. We were an early adopter of Facebook. We also make sure that we’re hitting our audiences on all platforms, everywhere we can reach them digitally. We share as much on Facebook as we would anywhere else, as much as we would on the air.”
An interesting sidebar is an observation made by Smith as to how the station concedes Facebook’s effectiveness in attracting younger Facebook users to become WTOC broadcast news viewers.
“Our younger viewers are platform agnostic so you can suggest that they consume news on another platform all day long, but if that’s not their habit, I don’t think they are going to do it. So the best thing you can do is just keep consumers mindful that we are a news content distributor and we are wherever they need it to be.”
Knowing your audience well is key to driving engagement on Facebook, says Smith.
As an example, Smith points to a news story some 30 miles from Savannah on the beach at Tybee Island.
“Back in the spring, the council was debating banning alcohol on the beaches and we knew that was going to be a really hot button for our audience and so we solicited viewer feedback in the wait of a poll and everybody had something to say on the issue.”
Content wins, says Smith, when it comes to posting on Facebook, not timing.
“Social media obviously was never set up to be a scheduled and regimented beast, so we don’t operate that way.”
So what’s an acceptable amount of time between posts on Facebook?
“If we space them out at least 15 minutes apart, I think we feel pretty safe,” says Smith.
And when you post can be more effective depending on the time of day.
“Typically for us I think that tends to be in the evening hours. When we look at analytics on Facebook, those times do kind of peak for us,” says Smith.
WTOC’s use of Facebook Live has been successful when it features live events that may not get much time on television, but is still of interest to users in Savannah and beyond.
“Savannah is known for our St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. There’s a fountain in downtown Savannah and they turn it green for St. Patrick’s Day. We broadcast that event on Facebook Live and it just went gangbusters.”
And when your community is sharing an experience together, says Smith, ask them to share videos, pictures and other user generated material.
“For example, school has started this week for a lot of our counties and so we have a back to school page and we showcase user-generated content from social media platforms.”
WTOC sees value in sharing the good news stories that do well on Facebook in its newscasts and vice versa.
“We actually have a daily segment in our early evening news called Good News and I find that if I can take that news story and give it a social media twist, those do well,” she says.
Smith points to a ‘good news’ story that came into the station as a routine press release about a police officer performing CPR on a little boy during a traffic stop.
“I let one of my marketing producers give it a little polish, but some big text on it, put some emotional music behind it and that thing went viral. I think we had like one point three million impressions on that single post.”
Having corporate ownership that supports social media with analytics and content from its other stations helps WTOC maintain a constant presence on Facebook.
“We try and make sure that our presence is just all the time around the clock 24 hours a day,” says Smith, “just the way Facebook operates.”
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