CNN gets Social Media-how about you?

Heather Wall - September 11, 2008

There has been a lot of hype and promotion recently with regard to incorporating Social Media into a company’s online marketing strategy.  Some of the biggest challenges are “how do we incorporate social media into our marketing strategy?”  And, “how is this going to help us grab a person’s attention?”

Well CNN gets it.  And you should too.  If you are wondering how to engage a larger audience and keep them engaged, check out how CNN is doing it.  One visit to their website, www.cnn.com, and you see they are all over the social media radar.  From RSS feeds, to Vlogs (Video Blogs), podcasts, and now… incorporating social media to create buzz and engage their audience live on the air!  Yup, you heard it right!  They are pulling the online world into the offline world right in front of you while you watch TV in your living room.  So, how are they able to do this in real time? Well, CNN is officially endorsing Twitter. They are the first major broadcasting network to do so, and they are doing a great job of incorporating it into their live broadcasting.  You’ll now find the likes of anchorman Don Lemon delivering a news story, then going to Twitter to see the direct impact of the story within the online Twitter community and announcing some of those comments live on the air.  It makes you want to go and check out CNN and Twitter, right?  I know I immediately started “tweeting” myself, hoping to get a comment in! 

This is social media done right!  Kudos to CNN and kudos to Don Lemon for laying such a foundation. So, you may be thinking, “Well that’s great, but what kind of online impact does social media really have?” Let’s look at CNN as compared to MSNBC, whom isn’t utilizing social media at the level CNN is.  One look at some online data utilizing Google Trends to see which website is receiving higher traffic volumes and it’s no surprise to see CNN is getting a great deal more online interest than MSNBC.  By CNN immersing itself into the online community, it’s seeing a direct impact with online buzz by people seeing CNN as their online news source. 

You can get started with this today.  If you already have a newsletter, then you can easily create an RSS feed on your website so others can download and share it.  You can start an online blog.  Make sure you post to it regularly!  Or, you can start podcasting.  Whatever direction is best for your company, you can easily get up to speed with web 2.0!  The internet is changing.  It is becoming a more interactive community.  No longer is a static website all you need.  More and more people are jumping online to interact with friends and businesses.  People are looking at customer reviews and corporate blogs to help them make decisions. If you can become more engaged, more social, in this ever changing online world, you’ll be sure to not get lost in the static.