Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Oh My!: How the CW Uses Social Media
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Several shows aired on The CW network.
Source: https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/coming-
soon/cw-shows-likely-coming-to-netflix-in-october-2016/ |
The company uses a variety of social media applications, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Additionally, The CW has its own app where users can view shows for free one day after it is premiered. The Twitter account has 929k followers and houses 15.8k tweets. Additionally, popular CW shows have their own Twitter accounts; for example, the Jane the Virgin account has 256k followers on its own. The Twitter account generally serves to inform the audience of premiere dates for their shows, as well as advertise the shows’ availability on The CW app. The Facebook page has 1.7M followers; like the Twitter page, its main purpose is to inform the audience of premiere dates. The Instagram account, @thecw, has 1.4M followers. Here, the posts are generally to advertise shows, as well as include more behind-the-scenes content for fans, such as interviews with the actors. The videos usually get around 20,000 views on this platform. Additionally, each show has its own Instagram account and actors will endorse their shows on their own personal Instagram accounts. The CW’s YouTube account has 1.1M subscribers. The posted videos include clips from The CW shows, as well as promos and trailers. The CW also has a Snapchat, Pinterest, and Google+ account. While the Facebook account has the highest number of followers, Twitter appears to be another very popular media platform for The CW as there are generally more likes and comments, and thus engagement from the audience, on Twitter as compared to Facebook. Overall, The CW updates these accounts frequently. This means about every 3 hours for Facebook and 2-3 times a day on Instagram. Because The CW twitter retweets a lot, there ends up being roughly 5-6 posts a day. Thus, there is a lot of content available for the audience to be engaged with. However, the network does not generally respond to the audience via likes or tweets.
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| An Instagram post by actress Gina Rodriguez, who stars in The CW's Jane the Virgin. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BnXpZwkhhUX/?taken-by=hereisgina |
In general, The CW is able to use these social media platforms to engage with audiences by making their content more accessible and advertised. If The CW only operated as a “traditional TV network,” then many more users would not watch the shows or be aware of their premiere times. By having clips and full episodes available through their online media and applications, more of the audience can view the shows, as well as voice their opinions. The audiences are able to engage with this content by tweeting or leaving comments on these posts, and using the hashtags that The CW generates for each of its shows. According to Pavlik and McIntosh, we generally trust our friends who post within our networks, so this content could influence other people who see these posts. However, for the most part the audience does not have a lot of “produser” activity, as The CW does not often retweet people or engage in conversations with the audience. Thus, the audience’s opinions likely do not reach a large variety of people outside of their own social networks. Thus, while The CW does succeed in using the social media tools effectively to promote content, The CW does not necessarily use the social media in a way that would better promote dialogue. In my opinion, The CW is involved in all of the mainstream social media apps and does not need to use additional forms of media, but could revise the way these primary platforms are used. The social media sources do, however, leave the audiences with a positive impression of the content, as the company is able to show a lot of exciting scenes from the shows. The social media channels include a variety of different shows, which allows a more diverse demographic of people to engage with the network.
A trailer for the show The Flash, posted on The CW Television Network YouTube Channel. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ93ltawl9A
The use of social media certainly has positive effects for The CW. The different social media accounts are able to effectively promote shows, and remind the audience of the shows even when they aren’t actively watching television. The CW is able to appeal to a large portion of the demographic that watches the shows -- young adults. Much of this population includes cord-cutters (that is, they have switched from cable to Internet-based TV), so they are attracted to these features. Additionally, people are able to share positive feelings and promote the show live, as they watch what is happening. However, because the platforms are accessible to nearly everyone, this does mean that people can share negative feelings more easily. One effect of social media usage is curation, meaning that people act as their own filters and reviewers. Thus, this can create a more negative image for the company if people don’t agree with the way it is run. This also means that spoilers are more easily announced for some of those important jaw-dropping moments.
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| One example of a tweet that mentioned the @TheCW account, expressing a negative opinion. Source: https://twitter.com/starg8r |
Concluding Thoughts
Overall, The CW uses social media in a very effective way. The CW is able to cover a lot of bases as it uses so many different social media platforms. Through each of these platforms, The CW is able to distribute a lot of promotional material that can influence audience viewership. According to the article, “The 5 Easy Steps to Measure Your Social Media Campaigns,” if a brand wants to increase its share of voice, one should track volume relative to the closest competitors. When comparing CW to television networks that attract a similar demographic, we see that The CW lives up to many other companies. For reference, on Twitter, ABC has roughly 552k followers, BravoTV has 1.13M followers, and CBS has 1.01M followers. Compared to competitors, however, there is a level of monetary threat; CW allows their users to view shows one day after they are premiered for free, whereas many other mainstream online TV providers such as Netflix or Hulu will charge customers for this service. Thus, there could be monetary loss if the amount of viewership for these shows during off-times does not compensate for this. According to The CW president Mark Pedowitz,
"The CW has always been great, watch us on linear, watch us on live plus same day, but just watch us. Our point of view is, if you missed it, come see it on DVR, come see it on digital. Just come see it and talk about it.”
A lot of social media potential exists for the company, as each show has its own social media page and thus a lot of outreach to the audience and their networks can occur. In terms of the company’s weaknesses, the company lacks a lot of direct engagement with users on its social media platforms. Thus, I would recommend that The CW respond to audience members, and like their comments, as “conversation” is one of the key tenets of social media usage. With a more open dialogue, I believe that more people would be attracted to what The CW has to showcase. Additionally, the majority of The CW content is self-promotional. Although this does frequently remind the audience to view The CW shows, many people could ignore posts if they start to follow a monotonous pattern. Thus, my second recommendation for the network is to include a larger variety of tweets and posts. Instead of only retweeting their own social media pages, they could start to incorporate more interesting tweets from actors or audience members that support their shows. In this way, I believe that the social media accounts would foster more interest. Overall, The CW is doing extraordinarily well in the social media world as a “smaller network,” but could attract even more people with smarter use of some of their social media accounts.
Sources:
Pavlik, John V., and Shawn McIntosh. Converging Media: A New Introduction to Mass Communication. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print
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