Social TV Is a Success for Discovery

Social TV has gone mainstream, and there is no better example than The Discovery Channel. With iconic shows like Shark Week, Man vs. Wild and Deadliest Catch, Discovery Communications has had tremendous success in their social media space. They are focused and deliberate in their social media strategy, and it's definitely showing. Shark Week alone was #1 on Trendrr's social TV ranking for that week. There were more than 750,000 tweets mentioning Shark Week, and their Facebook Page increased by 30,000 fans in a single day (116,000 fans throughout the week).

Gayle Weiswaser, VP of social media communications at Discovery Communications, let's us in on her strategy.

“Our philosophy on social media is to use it as a platform that enhances the viewing experience and the relationship with the viewers.”

They have 4 primary goals for their social media plan:

• Build relationships and engage with fans
• Personalize the brand
• Strengthen fan-talent relations
• Drive tune-in rate

After looking more in-depth at their social media objectives, it's easy to see that there are 2 main things that Discovery is doing especially well: content integration and content relevancy. Not only do they have an exciting mix of content throughout Facebook and Twitter, but also individual show pages, network pages, vertical pages and blogs. These are not treated as separate entities, but all of their platforms are integrated. For example, many of their Facebook and Twitter links go directly to original content on Discovery.com. Their holistic approach treats them all as one unit with many parts that build on and enhance the others.

Content relevancy is how Discovery excels at keeping their conversations going. "We serve as a curator of topics for our fans," says Weiswasser. Content may not directly relate to the show, but it still is relevant to the topic, which makes it interesting and engaging. For example, on the What Not To Wear page, you'll find links to the fall's top fashion trends. This keeps fans and followers in the conversation, and offers itself as not just an entertainment site, but a resource for related information.

All in all, it's most important to remember that content quality is top priority. More people should follow Weisman as she says, "We want the content to speak for itself. If it's compelling, people will want it-that's how we got this footprint." Stop obsessing about hitting a certain number of likes or followers and make sure your content is still king.