Syfy is a US based TV channel which features a large range of programming featuring pretty much everything from science fiction to paranormal to drama and even reality. It was known as Sci-Fi until 2009. It recently got revamped and new online content strategies were introduced to keep up with the viewers’ ever changing TV watching habits. Basically they’ve made their shows and promotions very much related to social media.
For some of the shows, for example Haven, there is a social story line along with the main one. Two of the main characters of that show are very active on Twitter engaging with the audience in their on screen persona which is one of the reasons that the show is one of the top trends on twitter regularly. Also, other popular shows like Ghost hunters have a very strong fan base on social media. For the show Face Off, there was actually a live audience voting for the first time ever which generated tremendous social participation. This was a genius strategy. You would always want the audience to get engaged in your show as much as possible. Syfy comes up with these ideas because of the bi-weekly meetings which have members from every department and they share their ideas.
Before the production for a show starts, the show’s creators and marketing teams sit down and focus on ideas that complement the show depending on the target audience and the genre and try to be as different as possible from the others. Pretty much every social platform is used depending on the type of show again. Surprisingly, there is no dedicated social team at Syfy. The job is split up between marketing and digital teams but everyone at the network is engaged with social because at the end of the day, it’s a team effort. The Syfy audience is called igniters, the people who are first to find and try out new things with high standards so Syfy has to be at the top of it’s game all the time when it comes to social.
In the end I would want to discuss the most important part. How is this article going to impact the way I approach my digital story? This article has made me realize that in today’s world, you have to keep up with ever changing viewing habits of the audience. Your content might be good, but if the audience doesn’t know about it or the first impression is not good, they will probably not care. Marketing and promotion of your product is the most important thing these days and it should be done in a creative way so that it grabs the attention of your target audience. If you do this, it is quite possible that even if your content is not that good, people will still watch it. The best way to get people engaged these days is social media. What I plan to do for my story is that, since it is targeted at Asian students, our group will promote it on Facebook, Twitter and WeChat (For Chinese people) mainly. It will start off with a twitter handle, facebook page and wechat page posting the teasers. One more thing I was thinking about that why not make a twitter page for one of the main characters of my film. My film is about problems Asian students face when they come to Australia. This way my target audience will be able to relate to my content more.
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