twitter goes to bed with tv

Inquiring minds at Brandwatch and My Clever Agency did an interesting study on how "dual screening" is transforming TV watching. Finds:

1. Dual screeners are most likely to tweet from bed. (Surely soon to be a New Yorker cartoon.)

2. Viewers are 12 times more likely to tweet about a show during days it's on air vs. days it isn't.

3. Tweeters are more negative about shows as they're being aired than they are about them after they've aired. (The past is always better, even in TVland)

4. Less than half of TV shows in the US include official hashtag in their broadcast. (When will showrunners get with the program their audience is watching?)

5. Most TV shows do use official hashtags on Twitter, however. (At least there's that.)

6. Almost half of the official TV show Twitter accounts seldom engage fans, not responding to mentions or queries.

More goodness here, with pretty infographic.

notes from my sxsw session

Thanks to Craig Carter for live blogging my SXSW session last week. If you missed it and want to catch up on how brands can use social storytelling to enhance the fan experience, his excellent notes can be found here. Or listen to the SXSWpodcast here. 

@bettydraper's guide to social storytelling

If you're in Austin for the SXSW digitalpalooza, hope you'll join @BettyDraper and me for a fun session on Monday morning at the Omni Hotel. It's @BettyDraper's Guide to Social Storytelling where we'll take a look at current examples of social advertising, transmedia, brand fiction and branded content to determine what makes stories work for today's social audiences--and what makes them fail. 

social tvland

image swiped from LA Weekly

One of the most interesting offerings at the banquet that is Social Media Week was a panel hosted by Alan Wolk of KitDigital, intriguingly titled "My Social TV App Thinks I'm My Dad."

Social TV has become a buzzword lately, though "social" misleadingly refers to a phenomenon that's been been around for a while. Mike Monello of Campfire pointed out that TV viewing has always been social. You may watch your favorite shows at night blobbing alone on a sofa, but part of the experience is deconstructing them the next day with coworkers or classmates. The difference is, now you don't have to wait until the next day. You can rant or rave with friends about episodes as they air, via the real time magic of Facebook and Twitter.

Research shows that a critical mass of viewers are now online while they're watching TV. What impact is this having in TV Land? Thanks to the plethora of info disseminated knowingly or unknowingly by users of social networks, entertainment companies and advertisers are far more knowledgeable about viewing behaviors and preferences of audiences. Which means they're shifting dollars to more accurately target spending. One panelist, Dan Neely reported that his company advised a client *not* to buy a halftime ad in the SuperBowl this year, but to air a spot on Walking Dead. Why? Because his social data showed that a critical mass of men don't watch halftime, they switch over to watching the AMC show instead. (Whether or not this resulted in sales, it indisputably saved millions.)

Jim Spare suggested that the biggest opportunity for the industry is to provide a companion structure for the frenzy of consumer activity that's already happening around programming, referred to as "second screen experience." Once this happens, he predicted, commenting on a show via hashtags and posts will seem archaic. And as more viewers become trackable via social media, advertisers will migrate to where the eyeballs are and advertising will support and elevate this experience.

More panel goodness can be found here, in a surprisingly satisfying Livestream experience. Don't miss the excitement about halfway through when Wolk takes on Neely in a showdown fueled by the age-old rivalry between creative and research.