How can a news anchor connect with his or her audience in a more personal way? Well, Brad Franko of WCBD-TV has shown that by using social media, you can connect with and update viewers in real time. Brad recognizes the importance of instant communication and that those connections formed on social media lead to more loyal viewers.

In just a few short years, the newsroom has changed from just monitoring a police scanner to monitoring local Facebook and Twitter feeds, searching for breaking news.

Read more from Brad to find out how he monitors multiple social media tools daily and keeps his viewers up-to-date in real time.

What is your job/company/profession/title?

News Anchor/WCBD-TV/News 2 Today

What was the first social media technology you used?

Facebook was the first tool I used…and I was resistant to it for a long time. It wasn’t until probably two years ago that I jumped on the wagon.

What is your favorite social media tool?

TweetDeck (Twitter in general) is my favorite right now. The ability to post news information on the various platforms through Twitter seems easier to me. Since I’m sending information to personal/TV station accounts I need to minimize the repetitive posts.

How have you used social media for your business/company and how has it benefited?

I use it daily to send out breaking news stories and updates to those throughout the day. I also use them to solicit information from followers/friends/fans. The best part is the instant communication you can have with viewers. I think making that connection on a semi-personal level leads to loyalty. It really helps us respond to breaking news faster than ever before. In the “old days” (three years ago) we would hear about a story over the scanner. Then you call a public information officer to confirm and then send a crew. Now, someone sees news, it hits Twitter or Facebook with a picture…and that’s confirmation enough to get a crew rolling to a scene. The interaction also galvanizes the trust you build over the years on the air with a more personal connection.

How much time would you say you spend a day engaging social media?

I am constantly engaged in social media…during the work day, Facebook and Twitter are open on my desk. I have a laptop with the dual-monitor setup so I can always see what’s happening. When I’m at home, I’m obviously not glued to my phone, but it’s not far away.

How do you incorporate it into your day so it’s not a time waster?

I find that leaving it open, almost like background music keeps me from drowning in updates.

Is there a social media tool/technique that you think is underutilized that you would like people to know about?

I think hashtags are overused, but underutilized if that makes sense. I’m guilty of it too though. I run searches for #CHS, #CHSTRFC, #CHSWX…if someone has something important to say about either topic, and I don’t follow them…the hashtag search pops it into a feed window. If you’re like me, you run out of characters and the first thing to go is the hashtag.

Where can people find you online and via social media?

Brad Franko – News 2 (Facebook)

WCBD News 2 (Station Facebook, great resource for your readers!)

@BradFrankoNews2 (Twitter)

@WCBD (Station Twitter)

Step Ahead is proud to be a media sponsor of BarCamp Charleston coming up at the College of Charleston, Nov. 13, and we’ve got a ticket to give away!

BarCamp Charleston hails itself as an “un”conference where participants lead and vote on the presentations that will be presented the day of the event. This year plan to vote for sessions ranging from tech-heavy topics like “Professional IT Certifications” and “Podcasting 101” to a mish-mash of subject matter, such as “Homebrewing 101” and “Salsa Dancing for Noobs”.

But… to give away our free ticket, we want to hear what your dream BarCamp session would be! What person, living or dead, would lead it and what would the topic be? Here’s my pick to get you going: Oprah leading “How to Make a Billion Dollars” .

Get creative, because our team will vote on our favorite answer on Monday and announce the winner. Simply go to our Facebook page’s BarCamp Tix! tab and enter your email and really clever answer. Feel free to tweet it too using #BarCampCHS. Good luck!!

Last month, our team came up with what we thought would be a fun contest to help promote our client, Spirit Telecom, a telecommunications company based in Columbia, S.C. While you might not think of that as the most social media savvy of subjects, we’ve prided ourselves in our ability to come up with some really interesting ideas that have increased their visibility online.

For our latest promotion, we decided to take the idea of silly/fun hashtags (a way to categorize tweets on Twitter) that often pop up and turn that concept into a contest, as well. Since they’re a telecommunications company, we thought what if we asked people who they would call – past or present, living or dead – if they had a magic phone. We turned #magicphone into the hashtag.

A blog post on the company’s site noted that at two random times during a 24-hour period we would choose the person who had tweeted #magicphone closest to that time and award them a Kindle, thus, the contest.

Well, as you may or may not have seen, #magicphone really took off. However, after a staff post-mortem of the promotion and conversations with several Twitter buddies, we realize we may have created an unintended annoying side effect especially for locals in Charleston (where #magicphone got started): filling up your Twitter account with a lot of #magicphone posts.

So we wanted to issue a #magicphone apology on behalf of Step Ahead, Inc. We realize now that the way we chose to select the winner (by selecting a random time) encouraged people to spam #magicphone over and over in the hopes they would land on the right time. Creating a bunch of spammy repeating posts was certainly not our goal.

We wanted people, if they were interested, to tweet it once or twice, tag two others, and be done with it. But instead, lots of people just posted the same tweet over and over and over again. If you were following multiple people doing that, your Twitter account quickly filled up with #magicphone.

Sooo…. we’ve decided that for future promotions like this we’ll allow folks to enter once per day only via Twitter and hopefully reduce the spammy tweets so it’s a bit more manageable – and fun, like we intended. We’re all learning as we navigate the ever-changing world of social media and we feel like every time we do a promotion and tweak and refine, we’re helping our clients have the best social media presence they can have.

Overall, though, Magic Phone was a success, sending more than 4500 people to our client’s Web site and exposing them to their products. Heck, I even got Trista Sutter (oh come on, you know she was The Bachelorette!) to tweet it!

I hope that helps make up for our mistake, Charleston Twitterers. Please know we did not intend to be annoying and never want to aggravate our best Twitter buddies.

So if you see #magicphone again, don’t worry. Hopefully, you’ll only see it a couple of times and you can choose to participate or not without a disruption to your Twitter day.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

The television news business is ever changing. The industry has gone from news on only three networks to 24-hour news channels to the reach and speed of the Internet and social media. Meghan Miller, the Web producer for WMBF News, the NBC affiliate in Myrtle Beach, saw the power and importance of social media in TV news early on, and has been using it ever since to keep a step ahead.

We picked Meghan as January’s social media star, because she’s on the front lines of journalism embracing all that social media can do for this industry. She “gets” it where so many media outlets continue to struggle.

Meghan started the WMBF Facebook page in August 2008 with only 10 fans, but has grown the page to over 10,000! Daily, she manages multiple social media accounts for WMBF, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and, one you may not have heard about, Bubbletweet. Here is what Meghan had to say about social media:

What was the first social media technology you used?
Facebook. Over the years, it’s slowly become the No. 1 way I can keep a personal connection with my family and friends back in my hometown of York, Pa.

What is your favorite social media tool?
Definitely Twitter. Believe it or not, I was actually against getting a Twitter account, because I didn’t see the point in posting to the world what I was doing 24/7. Now it’s one of the first things I check on my Blackberry when I wake up – to see who’s doing what and what topics are making news in the Web world.

How have you used social media for your business/company and how has it benefited?
In all honesty, it’s one of the most important tools I use as both a journalist and as a Web producer. Social networking takes news to a whole new extreme – it allows us to see who’s doing what, what issues are important to our viewers, and really allows us to make those important connections with those who keep close tabs on our news product.

Our Facebook fan page has just exceeded 10,000 fans – many of which were gained in 2009. That’s an outlet where we can interact with our fans with a “Question of the Day” and post controversial news stories that we know will draw a response from the public. It also allows us to strengthen the push-pull from social networking sites to WMBFNews.com.

Twitter is another – I can’t tell you how many news stories we’ve broken because of Twitter and how many relationships we’ve built with legislators, community leaders, businesses and organizations because of the exchange of a few tweets. If we can’t pull any news stories off of Twitter, it at least helps us get our brains pumping to come up with new, fresh news content for our shows.
On the flip side, we can keep better track of our competition this way.

How have you seen TV news change since you started in the profession with regard to social media?
It has exploded! I can remember when we had 20 fans on our WMBF News Facebook Fan Page and 100 friends on our MySpace page. We’ve been nursing our social networking sites since we first launched in August 2008 and now depend on it for comments on controversial stories that really affect our viewers or our market drivers. Now, you’ll see a “Facebook Question of the Day” on each of our newscasts – and a big push to become a fan of WMBF News either on Twitter or Facebook.

What role do you see social media playing in TV news in the future?
I see it as a way to gather news stories, build the WMBF News brand, draw people into our product, interact with the community and share breaking news when it happens, as it happens.

How much time would you say you spend a day engaging social media?
Ha – it feels like 24 hours a day! It’s hard to gauge because my TweetDeck is always open, I’m always fiddling with UberTwitter on my phone when I’m away from my desk and always checking out Facebook. It’s a part of the job!

How do you incorporate it into your day so it’s not a time waster?
It’s hard! I make sure that when I’m at work – that’s what I’m on Twitter or Facebook for – just work. When I go on dinner break, am heading out to do a story or am on my own time, that’s when I hop on my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.

What’s your best tip for using social media for business?
Use it as just another tool to better your product and your overall image. Don’t ignore the fact that your viewers or clients are interacting with you on a “virtual” level – it’s the perfect time to draw people in! Engage, interact and don’t ignore!

Is there a social media tool/technique that you think is underutilized that you would like people to know about?
This is where I plug BubbleTweet, I do believe! I think BubbleTweet is an AWESOME alternative to Tweets if you have a webcam. It’s been a cool way to take people behind the scenes during a newscast, break news stories on a more personal and visual level and to show people that the news is more than just TV.

Where can people find you online and via social media?
www.twitter.com/wmbfmegmiller
http://www.facebook.com/meghanmillerwmbf

If you own a dog, you’ll want to meet our March Social Media Star: Leah England, founder and publisher of Lowcountry Dog magazine. Leah has created a fabulous publication that serves as a great resource for anyone living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina as a dog owner.

We picked Leah, because she has recently taken the magazine’s print presence online, as well, and is quickly becoming known as the expert for all things doggies in and around Charleston. She’s on Facebook, Twittering about the latest pet events and news, blogging about the pet world and has become the go to resource. And all this is helping grow her audience both online and in print. So with that, meet Leah!

What was the first social media technology you used?
LinkedIn. Ironically, though, I use it the least now.

What is your favorite social media tool?
Twitter and Facebook are neck and neck. With MySpace in second place, and LinkedIn in third.

How have you used social media to spread the word about Lowcountry Dog (LCD) and how has it benefited?
It’s amazing how social media enables me to interact instantly with LCD readers. It’s like having a constant focus group right in my living room. I ask LCD readers for their content ideas, what issues matter most to them, what they love most about LCD and what I should do more or less of. And the best thing is, they talk to me – like a real person! Not some elusive publisher holding a charette, but someone with whom they can have an open and honest discussion.

This year I’m heavily promoting the annual LCD model contest, held at PetFest, through social media. Even though we’ve always had a good turnout, I’m really pumped to see how things go this year!

I also promote LCD advertisers when it is relevant and newsworthy. If a groomer is offering a discount, a kennel has new online reservations and Web cams, or a retail store is hosting a meet and greet for a rescue – it all gets posted! So social media is giving me another opportunity to help pet-related businesses connect with their demographic.

How much time would you say you spend a day engaging social media?
2-3 hours. Weekday only. You’ve got to set some limits.

How do you incorporate it into your day so it’s not a time waster?
I schedule my social media activity. Morning, mid-day and late afternoon. I think it’s good to space things out, not only for yourself so you can get other things done, but also so you have the chance to catch different people at different times.

What’s your best tip for using social media for business?
The conversation should flow both ways. Don’t just constantly shove yourself down your followers’ throats. Ask questions. Respond to your followers’ posts. Post truly beneficial, entertaining and useful information. Be gracious. Be authentic. If you use a lot of auto-responders and post one-sided information, people can smell it a mile away. Social media is one of those things where what you get out of it directly correlates with what you put in it.

Is there a social media tool/technique that you think is underutilized that you would like people to know about?
I’ve only been using social media for about three months, so I’m not an expert. There’s a lot I feel I don’t use enough. I’m excited to begin using Flickr as a visual social networking tool and to start a Squidoo lens for Lowcountry Dogs!

Where can people find you online?
www.lowcountrydog.com
www.lowcountrydog.blogspot.com
www.twitter.com/leahengland

Kudos to the Charleston AMA, who continue to impress with their lunch time speakers.

I just got back from Mt Pleasant after hearing Bill Leake of  Apogee Search and it was certainly worth the 200+ mile round trip.

Bill did a great job of explaining in very simple terms the factors and processes involved in achieving good search engine visibility. He is (obviously) very knowledgeable, quite amusing without being corny, and comfortable with the mic. All in all, exactly what you would want in a speaker.

So, as the SIMS Agency is also in the field of SEO, why was I so pleased to hear someone do a better job of explaining things than I could? Well, a few reasons really:

1. I am in no way a competitor of Apogee search. Whereas our clients our small-mid sized businesses, Bill works with the likes of Dell and Olive Garden.
2. I often feel that one of the things I could most improve upon would be explaining things to clients in a non-technical (or not overly technical) way. Bill certainly did this, and I feel like I learned something from his presentation.
3. Validation! At each step of the talk there was the confirmation that the way the SIMS Agency approaches things is the way he was recommending. This is a very comforting thing to know, especially for SEO where the topic is clouded by years of myths, lies, confusion and misinformation.

Many thanks to every one who helped organize this. I hope other people found it as helpful as I did.