Sweeps!

Last week CBS went through a bit of a social experiment to coincide with Sweep Week. They called it CBS Social Sweep Week and put their stars in charge of their show’s corporate Twitter and Facebook properties to interact with fans. This was an amazing idea, and to the best of my knowledge, is the first time this has been done!

For those of you who’ve heard about “sweeps week” before but never really nailed down what it is, I offer you the following answer. Sweeps week is when Nielsen does full nationwide surveys of TV ratings. There are “sweeps” weeks in November, February, and May and this is when networks air their most elaborate episodes and cliffhangers to entice as many fans to watch as possible.

Having watched the social data related to the networks fall television schedule, I for one, was super excited to see how this would play out. One of the things I’ve been grousing about around the Radian6 offices, is the lack of real engagement between network Twitter properties and their fan bases. What an opportunity!

The Data:

Going into this I had some questions and expectations. I was curious to see how overall volume would be impacted and expected to see noticeable increases in total volume driven by engagement with fans.

After analyzing the data I was surprised to see only modest gains for the majority for the shows, with some notable exceptions. To compile the data, I looked for all mentions of the shows as well as their Twitter hashtags, between the dates November 5, 2011 to November 11, 2011.

The majority of the shows, with a few exceptions, saw modest growth in their social volume on average between five and ten percent.

The graph below shows the top five social shows throughout CBS Sweep Week. There is one caveat related to the data – Two and a Half Men saw a huge 94.5% increase in social traffic from the previous week, however the majority of this conversation was a related to Ashton Kutcher’s tweet about Joe Paterno on Wednesday, November 9 and not related to the show. I included it here for the sake of clarity since it appears in the summary graph above, and I didn’t want to exclude it without explanation.

With the exception of NCIS and Criminal Minds, the other programs did not factor into the top five social shows in terms of overall volume. So what drove this growth?

Looking through the Twitter feeds, all of the shows did similar things during sweeps week. Each of the shows tweeted pictures of the cast in-between takes, shared shots of the sets, and the people who work behind the scenes. They also held Q&A sessions with fans and posted the tweeted the answers.

The shows all have various follower counts as well. For example, Big Bang Theory has 214,914 followers but only registered a 3% increase in social activity, whereas 2 Broke Girls has just 16,955 followers and registered a 16% increase in social activity, while A Gifted Man has just 5,864 followers and registered a 29% increase in social activity.

So What?

What does this tell us? Well it can tell us a few things. The first and most obvious thing it tells us, is that increasing social activity increases the social footprint of the show’s Twitter handles. This increase in presence can increase the resonance of the show’s tweets through retweets from followers.

To illustrate the point I’ll use 2 Broke Girls as an example. The week before CBS Social Sweep Week the official 2 Broke Girls twitter account didn’t make the list of the top ten most retweeted accounts. Kat Denning, actress on the show and a social tweeter was the number one retweeted user in discussion related to 2 Broke Girls, with 80 retweets.

On the other hand Kat Denning’s co-stars Beth Behrs and Nick Zano didn’t make the list of top ten tweeters in relation to their show.

These numbers changed significantly during CBS Social Sweep Week when the show and the stars were putting out interesting content and engaging with their fans. Kat Denning maintained her number one spot on the “Top Ten Retweeted” list with an increase of 326 retweets. The official 2 Broke Girls account landed in the number three spot with 58 retweets, while Kat’s co-stars – whose accounts became noticeably more social during sweep week – tied for the number four spot with 30 retweets a piece.

A little extra work and the show increased its social presence through engaging with it’s fans.

What CBS Social Sweep Week did show, is that fans are eager to engage with the writers, actors, and creators as evidenced by the Q&A sessions. This sort of engagement with fans helps to develop even deeper relationships and spreads through word of mouth as well as word of “mouse.”

The one thing I would have loved to see was more direct engagement with fans from their Twitter handles. The feeds still read as a promotional, albeit somewhat more personalized, with the voices of the actors. Increased engagement will help deepen the relationships between brand and fans and increase word of mouth referrals and buzz and may be the ticket to seeing social media efforts really start to influence viewership ratings.

What were your thoughts on CBS’ Social Sweep Week? Would/does engagement with a show or celebrity encourage you to invest more time in the program?

Mike Girard is a Radian6 Community Engagement Specialist in Media & Communications. Grab your remote and follow along with Mike on Twitter at @MikeGRad6.