WDRB, Block Communications’ Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky., comes out ahead of the market’s other TV stations in a competitive race in social media actions over the last six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee. WDRB has just over 3 million actions on social, 26% of the market’s almost 12 million actions. […]
WDRB, Block Communications’ Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky., comes out ahead of the market’s other TV stations in a competitive race in social media actions over the last six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee.
WDRB has just over 3 million actions on social, 26% of the market’s almost 12 million actions.
WAVE, the NBC affiliate owned by Raycom, is in second place behind WDRB by about a half million actions, followed closely by the market’s CBS and ABC affiliates, Hearst’s WLKY and Tegna’s WHAS, respectively.
WDRB had the most actions on Twitter with almost 52,000 actions.
WAVE leads the market in actions per post with 252, and also leads on Instagram with over 53,000 actions.
Jennifer Keeney, WDRB’s assistant news director, attributes her station’s success on Facebook to “content, consistency and all newsroom involvement.”
“It’s all our reporters, our producers, our assignment desk, and our photographers. Those are some of the best resources you have for interesting fodder for social media.”
Keeney says WDRB tries not to overwhelm its Facebook users with too many posts, keeping it consistently down to about two per hour.
One of the advantages WDRB has over its television competitors, says Keeney, is that it isn’t beholden to big corporate ownership that often requires their stations to post content from other markets.
“We really have the ability to focus on local content. We really do things our own way and we can see what’s working and respond to it quickly instead of having this corporate edict of this is how we’re going to run digital.”
One local story that went viral on WDRB’s Facebook page, ended up being the lead story on a WDBR newscast.
“There was a McDonald’s in a town and on Father’s Day, a customer saw somebody behind them in line at the drive through and it was a dad with four kids in the car and she said hey I want to pay for his dinner and it went on and on for four hours and the chain lasted 167 times.”
WDRB was able to interview one of the customers who was in line.
“We led with it on the newscast,” says Keeney.
“We had a great rating on our newscast that day.”
https://www.facebook.com/WDRBNews/videos/1443832418995993/
The emphasis on local content extends to WDRB’s use of Facebook Live to boost engagement, and nothing is more local than the weather.
“Our chief meteorologist Marc Weinberg does an exceptional job of doing Facebook Live videos, especially when there’s active weather. When he goes into these Facebook Live videos, he does a lot of explanations of why things are happening. It also gives people a chance to have the eye of our chief meteorologist and ask their questions and just to have a personal engagement with them.”
That engagement on Facebook Live, Keeney believes, helps the station gain broadcast viewers.
“He will get tens of thousands of people on a Facebook Live video and then if there’s a severe weather alert, they’ll go to Mark because he’s the guy who answered their question on Facebook Live. So you may not make money off of Facebook, but you make relationships and you build a loyal following from that. So it’s really important.”
Keeney says another way Facebook helps the newsroom is when users send in news and story tips, adding to more meaningful content in the station’s newscasts.
She points to a classic example where a tip came in that questioned how a local fire chief was handling the department’s funding.
“One of our reporters started investigating it,” says Keeney, “and it turns out it was a legitimate tip. It took a lot of digging, but we finally got a really good story out of it. We won Emmy awards and Edward R. Murrow awards for our coverage on it.”
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