Objective:
Through social media marketing TVGuide.com wanted to reach new audiences and increase brand and content awareness, while increasing inbound links and driving traffic to the site.
Strategy and Tactics:
Define worked with TVGuide.com to evangelize the concept and value of social media marketing among company stakeholders. Once internal support was secured, Define helped TVGuide.com to identify opportunities, prioritize the communities to focus on and set their outreach strategy. TVGuide.com staff members were trained on effective and appropriate participation.
TVGuide.com’s approach included establishing a Brand Ambassador to interact with bloggers, fan sites and in social communities in support of related site content. All efforts were completely transparent, with the need for being a genuine member of the communities strongly emphasized. Once its credibility was established, TVGuide.com leveraged its access to exclusive content and information to make contributions of real value to the communities.
Results:
Over time, TVGuide.com was able to make strong connections in a variety of social media outlets. Through the outreach efforts of the Brand Ambassador, TVGuide.com established a network of avid fans that were happy to spread the word, unsolicited, about special content related to a particular TV show, film or celebrity in a variety of forums. This had an exponential effect that was much more effective than anything TVGuide.com could have done on its own.
One effort in support of online and print content around a new Disney film offers a good snapshot of their success:
- Film page received 2 times more traffic than any other film/show page in that period
- Photo gallery page views: 700% greater than site average
- Video viewing: 300% greater than average
- Time on page: 25% greater than average
- New visitors: 192% greater than average
- User ratings/votes: 1000% greater than average
- Print magazine sales: up 65%