Tweeting from the C-SPAN Bus
The timing for my second blog post is ideal since I recently sat in on a Digital Services/New Media department meeting at C-SPAN. This department distributes electronic alerts to C-SPAN fans who have registered for them, manages and tracks Twitter feeds for various other departments within the company. It also implements live streaming of television via the Internet, and performs various other technical activities. Since C-SPAN is a television network that relies on Twitter, this seemed like a great opportunity to gain some insight to my research topic about how the mention of television shows in tweets affects on-air television ratings.
One of the topics covered in this meeting was the use of Twitter on Inauguration Day in January. This was the first Inauguration Day in which C-SPAN tweeted consistently throughout the Inaugural Address. I asked whether the department thought that C-SPAN’s presence on Twitter caused more people to tune into C-SPAN on Inauguration Day. They weren’t sure about this connection yet, but they did say that audiences definitely had C-SPAN on their minds because they were mentioning C-SPAN in their tweets. When viewers who aren’t directly associated with C-SPAN tweet to us, it basically serves as free publicity. Even if the tweet in question has nothing to do with C-SPAN directly (for example, if someone repeated a quote from President Obama and tagged C-SPAN only because that is the channel they watched it on), it still may encourage other people to follow C-SPAN on Twitter.
The Digital Services Department also works with the Marketing department on special projects since much of C-SPAN’s news is now distributed via the Internet in order to stay competitive and reach news consumers in ways that are efficient for them. Specifically, the Digital Services and Marketing departments have been working together in order to find new, more efficient ways for people on C-SPAN2’s BookTV tours to register for alerts. These alerts are, essentially, daily emails that inform viewers of what the C-SPAN line-up is. The purpose is to inform viewers of programs they may be interested in tuning into. They also inform people of the location and schedule of the C-SPAN bus.
The C-SPAN bus travels across the country, attends book tours, and visits high schools and middle schools in order to educate people about political events and literature discussed on BookTV. I spoke with the marketing director in order to pick his brain about how Twitter has changed the traditional methods of gaining a following for the bus, and how it has change C-SPAN’s marketing strategies. He explained that many of their alerts are tweeted to followers. This brings into question whether email alerts are still necessary or if we can just encourage people to follow C-SPAN on Twitter in order to receive alerts. He said that we’re still trying to grasp the demographic of C-SPAN Twitter followers. In terms of BookTV, it’s safe to say that students have enough of an online presence that they are more likely to follow C-SPAN on Twitter than to sign up for an email alert. In terms of whether he thought Twitter has the power to affect human behavior, he was very confident. He said that BookTV’s Twitter activity has increased the amount of people that visit the bus during book tours.
Even though talking to people in C-SPAN’s Digital Services and Marketing departments did not necessarily provide proof that C-SPAN’s Twitter content causes increased ratings, the answers to my questions indicate that a lot of weight and focus are placed on Twitter’s role in the growth and future of C-SPAN. One can deduce that if a company is willing to put time, effort, and money into gaining a social media presence, that company must believe that social media is important to the growth of its brand whether that applies to television ratings, or simply, to positive recognition of that brand. Like many other companies, C-SPAN is learning about the implications of Twitter as it implements it as a tool to promote the network and build and maintain relationships with news consumers. I’m looking forward to working first hand with C-SPAN social media this semester in order to gain more insight to whether my variables (Twitter mention of television and on-air television ratings) exhibit causality.
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