With the holiday season upon us, it’s extremely important to use social TV to stay fit and healthy as latkes, jelly donuts, eggnog and more are being thrown at us in every directly. Dr. Oz and his digital team behind the Emmy Award-winning “The Dr. Oz Show” have leveraged social TV to spread healthy living tips and create a social TV experience around asking the extremely important question, “how are you feeling today?”
I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Oz, Samantha Lazarus (@srl23), General Manager of Oz Digital, John Oates (@JOates32), Head of Social Media for Dr. Oz Digital, and Dave Lankford (@davelankford), Director of Product for Dr. Oz Digital, when Dr. Oz joined the @HealthJoinIn #SocialFitness Jury on Real-Time Academy for the Shorty Awards (the ceremony I produce for my full time job).
Lankford described the “the most fundamental question in health and wellness, and not surprisingly, the first question a doctor asks when meeting a patient,” which is of course “how do you feel?” To bring this important question to social TV they launched You Feel, an app on their site that lets viewers and users “enhance their response,” to this question, “by adding an image from their local computer, a picture from a Facebook album, or a YouTube video.” The results, from their community around the globe, is an amazing Pinterest-type visualization that he describes as the “pulse of the Dr. Oz community.”
Lazarus also described that, “how Dr. Oz uses Facebook, is very different than how he uses Pinterest, Google+, Twitter or Tout, but each will try to establish a personal connection between the user and Dr. Oz.” She added that, “authenticity and engagement are paramount priorities to us and that is what guides most our strategy decisions.” Oates added that, “our goal is to make Dr. Oz’s social media platforms a fundamental part of the viewing process.”
Every TV personality must remember how important it is to not only use each platform, but to use each one differently, while at the same time recognizing that the most important thing is to recognize and visualize content from your fans and community. Happy Holidays!