Facebook Comments Drive Promo For WCNC’s Chief Met

Brad Panovich has 260,000 followers on his Facebook page. Panovich is the chief meteorologist for WCNC, Tegna’s NBC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C.

WCNC has 741,000 followers on the station’s Facebook page. These are people who have taken the active step to follow both by clicking the blue FOLLOW button on the top of the respective pages.

That simple action usually indicates an affinity for Panovich and WCNC for whatever reason.

In addition, some of these followers and perhaps others who do not follow Panovich, write comments on his page. These are real people writing in their own words, unsolicited, and without any expectation of recognition or reward.

It doesn’t get more honest and real than that.

And WCNC has tapped into this “gold mine,” as WCNC Marketing Director Robert Dwyer calls it, to create a new promo for Panovich.

Dwyer says one of WCNC’s missions is to build trust in the community, and using comments from Facebook as testimonials in its marketing of Panovich is “much more credible coming from somebody other than me saying, hey isn’t Brad great, we are so lucky to have him, you should really trust him,” Dwyer says.

Dwyer says the station has an overabundance of comments that comes in constantly from Panovich’s Facebook page “because he is so active on social. This will an ongoing goldmine.”

Dwyer says using the Facebook comments as testimonials “have a lot of value. They play well on air, online and you can use them in social as well.”

And the efficiency of using the Facebook comments is a way “to keep it fresh very quickly,” Dwyer says.

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