Super Bowl Helps KARE Lead Social Media

This week, Social Scorecard focuses on how KARE took advantage of being the Super Bowl city and station to lead the Minneapolis market in social media actions over the past six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee.

KARE, Tegna’s NBC affiliate in Minneapolis, has more than 4.1 million actions on social of the total engagement generated by the DMA (No. 15), with more than 16 million social actions.

The Star Tribune, a daily newspaper owned by Glen Taylor, led on both Twitter and Instagram with 187,000 and 267,000 actions respectively.

KTIS-FM, (98.5 KTIS), a nonprofit, listener-supported Christian station owned by the University of Northwestern-St Paul, led the market in actions per post with 456.

Laura Stokes, KARE’s digital content manager says the station concentrated on providing some unique content as the Minneapolis Vikings began their playoff run in January, like the Vikings rally cry.

“We asked people across Minnesota to send us their ‘Skol’ chants,” said Stokes.

“We just got an amazing response from schools and businesses and we posted their chants on our Facebook page and through Twitter and people loved it.”

Bea Chang, KARE’s social media manager, says having the Super Bowl in Minneapolis gave the station a platform for people to share their pride for where they live, cold weather and all.

“A really good example of that was the social video called how to dress for a Minnesota winter,” said Stokes.

“The Super Bowl committee loved it so much that they asked us if they could share it.”

According to Chang, the station’s success on social media is due in part to increasing its use of Facebook Live on a daily basis which feature the station’s anchors and reporters, because “we feel like KARE stands out because of who is here.”

“For example, two of our Sunrise reporters and our anchors do a cooking segment with the chefs from across the Twin Cities.”

Stokes says KARE also does a Facebook Live before the evening news. “What you might see are two reporters sitting down together talking about what their story is, usually between 7 and 9.”

Naturally, weather is an obsession in the state, so the station has equipped the weather center so the meteorologists can go live on Facebook on their own to answer questions and connect with users.

“I think that’s a key to engagement,” says Stokes.

“People feel connected when they take a question and they answer a question. They feel that connection with another person that didn’t used to exist on the TV screen. Now, with social media, it opened it up for our viewers and our talent to be able to talk to them which is wonderful.”

Stokes says the station sometimes uses social media to push people to watch its newscast on television, creating social media videos that are different than what might be used on-air.

“You do get some information and we hope you want more and then you’ll watch the news. They create social videos now that work without the audio.”

Chang says the station’s use of social media has evolved over the years, from a platform to drive users to KARE’s newscasts or website to it being the primary outlet for breaking news.

“Facebook is literally the first place that we will put breaking news. The audience now demands more content on social media. So our strategy has completely been turned upside down.”