Boston’s Fox 25 News (@fox25news) has used a friendly rivalry with its Los Angeles sister station to drive a new batch of Twitter followers. “A few months ago, we noticed we were close to being listed on Lost Remote’s list for Top Local TV Stations on Twitter. We were determined to get on there!” explains Kyle Bishop, Fox 25’s senior web producer. “It just so happened that 5th station on the list was our sister station, KTTV FOX 11 (@myfoxla). We decided to embark on a playful competition.”
So Bishop and the rest of the web team began tweeting with the #beatLA hashtag, encouraging followers to share the tweets. They started with a 2,500 follower-deficit, but began gaining ground.
“The ‘Beat LA’ rivalry could be compared to the Celtics / Lakers rivalry,” Bishop explains. “It is the chant Boston fans use going as far back as the 1980’s during NBA games. With Boston being the HUGE sports city it is, our viewers really responded to the hashtag without much explanation!”
“Our followers really got into it,” Bishop said. “(They) responded by re-tweeting as well as encouraging their own followers to follow us!” This week @fox25news passed @myfoxla, closing the gap and gaining 5,000 overall. He told us how social media plays a “huge role” in the newsroom:
Everyone from the anchors and reporters to the assignment editors and photographers participates in the content on Facebook and Twitter. We have really taken ownership of the hashag #FOX25. Whenever anyone tweets with #FOX25 we automatically feed it into the @fox25news twitter feed as well as our Facebook page.
Reporters give updates on what they are working on, tweet behind the scenes pictures and interact with their followers, right up to the final package that airs on TV.
Viewers love seeing the “behind the scenes” footage. Before Twitter and Facebook really became popular, we would post photo galleries of the studio on our website. Our viewers responses to those galleries were always pretty big. I’d assume perhaps it’s because we gave them an inside look and really allowed them to connect to our newsroom. With the emergence of Twitter and Facebook, viewers are actually communicating with our reporters as if they are working on the story with them.
Like many newsrooms, Fox 25 illustrates how social media has “flattened” the publishing process. For years, web producers struggled — most unsuccessfully — to encourage reporters to write and update their stories online. But the instant, short-form, with-my-photo style of Facebook and Twitter has engaged newsroom staffs like never before.