Channel 4 – Socialising TV
An exciting event that shows how much fun and interaction you can have with social media and the challenges producers face when using it in live programmes.
On approaching the Channel 4 headquarters, we quickly realised that the enormous, artsy metal sculptures ahead followed the same principles of the iconic C4 title sequence where separated objects and buildings align to create the C4 logo when viewed from the correct angle. Directly behind, loomed the spectacular translucent walled building, beckoning us through its revolving doors where we received our press passes.
We were led into a room filled with red seats and what seemed like a private cinema. Claire McArdle (@cmcardle) was the first speaker, an Executive Producer at Maverick TV and her presentation was on Embarrassing Bodies: Live from the Clinic. The project generated over 50,000 users, asking over 20,000 questions through Twitter and Facebook and it became so popular, it got its own television show. The success came from the live interaction with the viewers through social media and using innovative click technology. Even with millions of page views a day, there was difficulty behind the scenes in choosing from thousands of questions and picking the best ones.
Next on the podium was Andy Bell (@bellomatic) from Mint Digital who talked about New Year Revolution, a site that opened in January 2012 giving tips to change your life either through getting fit, saving your money or to try something new in 31 days. Users were also given the opportunity to post pictures, text and videos to show their progress. This interactive platform got a lot of interest with 40,000 people on Get Fit, 20,000 on Stop Wasting Money and 15,000 on Something New. The challenge was not being able to control what people posted and 42,000 pieces of content were moderated in the procedure.
Hippo: Wild Feast Live presentation was held by Kate Quilton (@quilton), Channel 4′s Multi-platform Commissioner, and the idea behind this project was to use different social platforms to document hippos in the wild. People were able to send in their questions to the team on twitter and have them answered live, and this lead to the show trending on twitter. When the full documentary was released, it accumulated 2.3 million views.
Community and Social Media Manager, Ally Branley (@allylondon) of Channel 4 gave us an overview of how C4 uses social media within the corporation. C4 has around 150 twitter accounts and approximately 100 Facebook pages. Facebook is one of the main social networks that’s well connected with C4 as you can ‘like’ the pages that also contained apps which are generally created by one of their partners, and this helps new titles to gain exposure because of the feature of common likes on Facebook. What C4 also does that many companies do is have a social sign in where you can register on the site through a social network such as Facebook and Twitter.
So no matter what industry or business you work in, social media is vital in generating interest and being able to stay connected with your audience. Give us your opinion @raveSMW2012
Le Mi Ly (@Lilyinthepond)