Embracing digital’s significance as today’s primary news source, I implemented our station group’s first digital and social media policy in 2016, which defined strategic best practices to strengthen our competitive positioning.
Included with this was an official mission statement that delineated its ultimate purpose: “Establish an engaging and captive social media environment that ultimately converts users to additional digital traffic and newscast viewership.”
Within 6 months of implementation, we indisputably distinguished ourselves as the market leader in digital & social media, stealing significant market share from our closest competitor.
Objectives
- Embrace a “Digital+Social First” philosophy… pushing news content to digital and social channels immediately, as opposed to waiting for media or postponing for newscasts.
- Identify the best channels and methods for producing engaging social content, including strategically shifting primary focus to Facebook from other social platforms.
- Improve virality and audience reach by prioritizing company pages with high fanbases over smaller individual pages.
- Emphasize “quality, engaging, and relevant” content over frequency, as well as organic content versus shared or third party.
- Increase the frequency of Facebook Lives, including establishing a daily schedule when appropriate.
Outcomes
- Grew Facebook fanbase at nearly twice the pace of our closest competitor (39% versus 26%), surpassing their 20,000-fan lead within 6 months.
- Consistently outperform all other news agencies statewide in total engagement, with audience extensions topping 10,000%.
- Witnessed a noticeable spike in all other digital traffic from the onset of policy implementation.
- Received the “Best Social Media Strategy” Digital Innovation Award from the Local Media Association for 2016 and 2017… against hundreds of submissions.