Friday, March 25, 2011

NBCâs Dateline: Using Subtle Social Media To Turn Stories Into Trending Topics

If you simply set downbound on a weekday period and watch NBC’s Dateline, you’re absent discover on part of the experience. Increasingly, grouping are assembling to watch a selection exhibit same Dateline or CBS’s Survivor–and also to speech most what they’re seeing, live, via ethnic media. “We’re sight real instance communities forming,” said Ryan Osborn administrator of ethnic media at NBC News. Osborn’s an in-house evangelist, showing producers, correspondents and others how to ingest ethnic media–not just to investigate and report stories, but also to get those stories in front the large doable audience.

NBC’s TODAY, where Osborn cut his teeth as a producer, has shapely brawny ties to its viewers through Facebook and Twitter, and Dateline is apace catching up. The nightly newsmagazine recently passed 100,000 fans on Facebook, and Dateline’s direct anchor, Ann Curry, is in the bounteous leagues on Twitter, with more than a meg followers.

Curry uses Twitter to speech to fans, deal breaking news, and occasionally, to get a bounteous story. While Curry was news from Japan, she got a sound from a viewer in the U.S. most a relative, a pedagogue absent in digit of the Asian towns hardest impact by the earthquake and tsunami. Curry followed up, found the dweller pedagogue alive and well, and reunited her with her family springy on TV.

“We same the sense of accord we’re building with our audience,” said Liz Cole, chief application at Dateline, which devoted an distance to the structure grouping utilised ethnic media to find lost friends and relatives after the hardship in Japan.

“Where it gets rattling interesting,” Osborn told Mediaite, “is where our journalists ingest the tools throughout the day, throughout the week…and when the distance airs, the conference is rattling formed.” Osborn and Cole say the prejudice most disclosing the stories existence produced by a primetime news exhibit (for fears of losing a competitive advantage) hit presented artefact to the Brobdingnagian benefits of conjunctive primeval to a possibleness audience. When Dateline’s Kate Snow was employed on the Nihon hour, she permit her followers undergo on Twitter:

“The continuance we get from effort discover primeval outweighs some competitive disadvantage,” Cole told Mediaite. Connecting primeval effectuation gift Dateline’s fans a quantity to distribute the word through their possess ethnic networks, a viral gist that’s proven to grow audiences for tralatitious media.

When CNN’s Piers Morgan landed a terminal instance booking for an hourlong springy discourse with Charlie Sheen, there was no instance for tralatitious publicity or promotion. moneyman and his producers place the word discover via Twitter precisely four minutes aweigh of airtime, and ease in that time, a ethnic media storm brewed, and apace delivered moneyman his prizewinning ratings to date. Word can distribute with amazing speed, and there are clearly plentitude of grouping discover there who can get the communication in instance to flip on the TV.

“When we first started, we were talking to an conference of a couple thousand people,” said Osborn. “Now it’s hundreds of thousands. The ontogeny has surprised everyone.”

Huge numbers, but ease only a segment of the conference for a weekday period edition of Dateline. The trick, Osborn and his team hit discovered, is conjunctive with the ethnic media grasp without turning soured everyone else. So when Dateline ventilated its possess distance on Charlie Sheen, there was no on-air name of Twitter, but the show’s graphics contained the impalpable cue: Charlie Sheen: #Winning Ways? The hashtag was a country communication to Twitterfolk, who apace dispatched the hashtags “#winning” and “#datelinenbc” into the trending topics for the night.

“I same impalpable structure of acknowledging the audience, and if they poverty to join, that’s great,” said Osborn.

So when you flip on NBC for Dateline tonight, don’t block your laptop. You don’t poverty to miss the rest of the show.


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