PBS Social Media Spotlight-- Welcome Guide

Hi there, Stations!

It's the PBS Social Media Team here, and we are happy to announce a new series - The PBS Social Media Spotlight!

Once a month we will be doing a SPI Blog takeover focusing on the latest and greatest from the social media world. To kick things off, we have created a public Google folder that will be the home for any information or forms you might need. Below is our Welcome Guide to this folder which gives you more information. Check it out, and stay tuned for the series!

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PBS Station Social Media Welcome Guide

The PBS Social Media Team (contact info below) is dedicated to supporting local station efforts on social media and we hope this guide will provide an overview of the different resources available to you.

Please bookmark the PBS Station Social Media Resources folder for future reference: to.pbs.org/stationsmresourcesfolder

Inside the folder, you will find these forms:
This Welcome Guide: to.pbs.org/stationsmwelcomeguide

Facebook Post Request Form: to.pbs.org/pbsfacebookposts
At any time you may request a geo-targeted post be made on the PBS Facebook page.   More details about what they are and how you can ask for them are in this form.

PBS/Shows/Stations Social Media Universe: to.pbs.org/pbssocialmediauniverse
This spreadsheet lists all PBS accounts, producer/show accounts, and station accounts, plus information about how many followers and fans each one has. This is updated quarterly.

Social Media By Stations: to.pbs.org/stationsocialmedia
This spreadsheet lists all of the different accounts that local stations manage.

Find & Follow Us On:

Facebook - 
PBS
PBS Kids
PBS Parents
PBS Digital Studios
PBS Food

Twitter -   @PBS
@PBSDS
@PBSkids
@PBSparents
@PBSLrnMedia
@SPI_PBS
@PBSpressroom
@PBSFood

Instagram -  
@PBSofficial
@PBSkids
@PBSFood

YouTube -  
PBS
PBS Digital Studios


Reddit -  
PBS subreddit 
PBSofficial (user account)
PBSdigitalstudios (user account)

Tumblr -      
PBStv
PBS This Day in History
PBS Arts
PBS Food
PBS Digital Studios
PBS Parents

Pinterest -  
PBSofficial
PBS Food
PBS Parents


Google+ -  PBS
LinkedIn -  Public Broadcasting Service
RebelMouse -  PBS
Storify -  PBS
GetGlue -  PBS

If You Haven’t Yet:
Ask to join the PBS & Local Stations / Social Media Marketing & Communications Facebook Group.
This group is intended to promote discussion and education about social media marketing/communications/advertising for those who work in public television, both at the local and national level. To join: click on the link in this paragraph and then look for the “request to join” box toward the upper right corner of the page.

Sign up for the PBS Previews Newsletter

Subscribe to the SPI Blog for helpful tips, advice and product news, as it happens.
Once a month, the PBS Social Media team will do a blog takeover for a “Social Media Spotlight” that will address topical social media issues and updates, while also sharing tips and tricks with a specific channel focus.

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If you have any questions, concerns or ideas, please feel free to contact Kevin Dando (@kdando) or Natalie Benson (@NatalieNBenson) by emailing pbsi_stationservices@pbs.org with the subject "Social Media".

Getting Ready for Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting is right around the corner and PBS Digital is bustling to prepare for the big event. Take a sneak peak at some of the PBS Digital sessions planned:  

Using Content to Break Out of the Box

Tuesday, May 14, 4:20-5:30 pm

PBS LearningMedia:  A Key Driver for Your Sustainable Future

Wednesday, May 15, 11:20 - 12:20 pm

Understanding Multiplatform Television Behavior

Wednesday, May 15,  11:20 - 12:20 pm

Think Big, Act Big

Wednesday, May 15, 2:10 - 3:10 pm

Building Local Engagement with Key Stakeholders through PBS LearningMedia

Wednesday, May 15, 2:10 - 3:10 pm

Digital Entrepreneurship:  The Business of Online Video

Thursday, May 16, 10:30-11:45 am

To view Concurrent Session descriptions, click here.

If you will be at Annual Meeting,  please stop by the PBS Digital booth and say hello to the Station Products & Innovation Team.  

And what’s Annual Meeting without Happy Hour?

Come enjoy a Digital Refresh with PMP & PBS Digital, Wednesday May, 15 5:00 - 6:30pm. Look for location information at registration.  

Bento Product Update

By José Fernández, Product Deployment Manager, PBS Digital

PBS Digital’s Bento team released new features in the past week, including several updates specific to the Explorer theme.

Add an inline COVE Player to the Text plugin: 

Users may add a small video player, via COVE, to a Text box. To change the alignment, right click the video placeholder image in the plugin, select “Insert/Edit Image” and go to the appearances tab, where you may select from a drop-down menu. 

Other improvements to the Text plugin:

Additional options related the the Link, Image, and File plugins are now available. Log into your Bento Explorer admin to try them all!

Explorer Header Logo:

The Explorer Header Logo smart snippet has been updated with a URL link field and hover text.

Explorer Social Media Icons:

The Explorer Social Media Icons snippet has been improved to allow a user to select up to eight social media icons. 

Radio-Schedule on Explorer:

An Explorer version of Radio-Schedule-iFrame snippet has also been added, allowing dual licensees to easily display radio station schedules. 

Advanced Segments - Filtering Google Analytics Data to Evaluate Organic Search Traffic

By Melanie Phung, Director of New Media, PBS Digital

When digging into Google Analytics to determine which of your traffic generation tactics are driving the best results, filtering the reports to include only specific kinds of traffic can help you find actionable data much faster.

The Advanced Segments feature is the simplest and most consistent way to isolate different types of traffic. For example, you can filter your analytics data so it shows only visits that came from organic search by taking these quick steps:

                            1.      Click on “Advanced Segments” in the horizontal menu bar.

                            2.      Select “Non-paid Search Traffic” from the list on the left.

                            3.      Hit the “Apply” button.

Other default segments include filters to show only new visitors, only returning visitors, only those visits with conversions, and more. 

You can also create “custom” segments if what you’re interested in tracking isn’t included in the default list. Potential custom segments you can create include “only visitors from my state” or “visits that include video pages.” 

These segments help you hone in on the behavior of different kinds of visitors and isolate which of your different marketing efforts are resulting in which gains.

To see which pages on your site are doing a good job of attracting search engine traffic, follow these steps:

                            1.      Select “Non-paid Search Traffic” from the list of default segments.

                            2.      Visit the Landing Page report (under Content  > Site Content > Landing pages) to
                            see the first page that visitors landed on when they came from Google or Bing
                            (or another  search engine).

Without the filter applied, the list of pages will include landing pages from social media and other traffic sources as well, which would not give me a good sense of what pages had high visibility in the search results.

On this Landing Pages report, you can see which pages are already doing well in organic search and determine if there are opportunities for incremental SEO improvements. Conversely, if an important page is getting a lot of engaged traffic in general, but not showing up at all as a landing page for non-paid search traffic, that tells you it’s a popular page but that visitors aren’t finding it in search results. You can then decide if it’s worth putting SEO effort into trying to get this page ranked to drive even more sustainable traffic. Follow up by tracking organic search performance of this page over time.

By default, when you select and apply an Advanced Segment, it stays selected for any other report you browse to.  Be sure to clear your filters and advanced segments once you’re ready to look at your overall traffic again.

  

Additional resources:

            More information on Advanced Segments.

            Google Analytics Solutions Gallery with pre-built segments, custom dashboards and custom reports.

Tech Tip: How to Create Chapters in COVE

Chapters are a great way to embed your COVE video with a structure. That way the viewer can scroll over the timeline at the bottom of the video and see short descriptions of the different video segments. It's a great resource for engaging your users in a more specific way.

Here are the key components needed to embed chapters into your video and what the user experience is like:

Title: Needs to be 32 characters or less. An effective title can peak viewer interest in specific segments of your video.

Short Description: 90 character description of the content of the chapter. This will help the viewer decide what chapters to watch.

Long Description: Enter a more robust description here, but note this does not surface in the portal.

Tags: Leverage your SEO best practices here. For more information on SEO see the Station Guide.

Start Time: This is the time into the video at which the chapter will begin. To set this click the black clock icon and adjust the slider to the time you want the chapter to start. After the first chapter, subsequent chapter starting times will auto populate.

End Time: This is the time into the video that the chapter ends. Again, to set this click the black clock icon and adjust the slider to the time you want the chapter to end. This will become the start time of the next chapter. NOTE: This end time needs to go in BEFORE the beginning time when chaptering or the beginning time will zero out.

Icon: This is the thumbnail image that is associated with each chapter so choose this carefully!

Happy Chaptering #LocalPBS!

**Last updated: April 16, 2013 01:22PM EST

Merlin Webinar Series Recap

By: Jen Carter, PBS Digital

In hopes of better acquainting stations with existing PBS products and services, the Station Products & Innovation (SPI) team began it's recent round of product webinars by discussing Merlin. Last week, the team hosted the final installment of the Merlin webinar series.

For those unfamiliar with Merlin, it enables stations to leverage their content on the national platform, PBS.org. It is also leveraged on the PBS mobile apps, as well as by other topic specific initiative such as PBS Food, Black Culture Connection and collections, which appears on multiple areas and platforms. The admin tool is part of two major products, COVE 2.0 and Bento, which will enhance PBS Member Stations' digital presence.

In part 1 of the series, titled The Magic of Merlin, the SPI team explained how Merlin is leveraged across the national platform. A brief demo on how to create objects for Merlin was also included in part 1, along with a discussion on how Merlin is integrated into other PBS products.

• You can view the recorded archive of the presentation here.
• To go along with the recording you can also download the deck here.

In part 2 of the series, titled Bento Meets Merlin, the team shared how Bento queries the Merlin catalog of local and national content, then showcased some content and editorial best practices. Part 2 closed with answers to stations' questions about all PBS products and services.

• You can download the archive recording and deck used during the presentation here.

View our Merlin Resource Center for more information.

WNET's Innovation Day

Pat O'Connell, Senior Major Gifts Officer at WNET

WNET’s first Innovation Day was a resounding success thanks to the participation of nearly 200 of our colleagues this past Monday!  In response to the Employee Engagement Survey, the 14 member Innovation Committee started planning a company-wide event to build upon and promote innovation at WNET in the fall of 2012.  The committee sought to bring leaders from the non-profit, academic, consulting and media worlds together to discuss best practices for innovation with WNET staff.  The purpose of the day was to take lessons learned from presenters and apply them to our everyday work.

Foto Friday: 2013 White House Easter Egg Roll

PBS and PBS KIDS Join 135th White House Easter Egg Roll (Scott Henrichsen: scott@scottfoto.com)

Build Your Audience with Google AdWords

by David Glisczinski, Wisconsin Public Television

Did you know...there’s an easy way to funnel traffic to your site, and it’s totally free? You won’t even have to hire a graphic designer or IT guru to get up and running.

I’m talking about Google’s online advertising tool AdWords, which powers the search ads you see on google.com. The nonprofit version — called Google Grants — offers $10,000 worth of AdWords advertising per month at no charge. That’s $120,000 of FREE advertising each year to promote your public television station!

In March 2012, I launched Wisconsin Public Television’s first AdWords campaign. A year later, I couldn’t be happier with the results. We’ve generated 50,000 site visits from users. January alone topped 11,000 clicks, or $6,000 worth of AdWords advertising. 10 percent of search engine traffic to WPT’s website now comes from AdWords campaigns.

It gets better.

Three New Bento Modules Deployed

By: José Fernández, PBS Digital Event Calendar Plugin The Event Calendar plugin uses the Google Calendar to allow users to display events on their Bento site. The Event Calendar works in both the right rail and in the main content areas. This module requires a user to have a free Google account, where all of the events are created. Users then enter in the email address associated with their Google calendar in order for display their calendar on their Bento site. Photo Gallery Plugin The Photo Gallery plugin has two parts, the main Photo Gallery, which is placed on a page, and a Photo Gallery Promotion module, which allows users to display a few images and link back to the main Photo Gallery. The promo module works in both the right rail and the main feature well. The plugin allows users to add a title and tease line to the Photo Gallery. Metadata for each image is updated in the Filer section of the Bento admin. Video Collection Smart Snippet The Video Collection smart snippet allows users to create a carousel of videos that dynamically change when a site visitor clicks on a thumbnail image. The Video Collection Featured smart snippet includes the COVE Video player and a carousel of videos. The Video Collection List smart snippet is an optional extension of the Video Collection smart snippet, displaying additional videos in a cascading, three-column format. The Video Collection List smart snippet can only be used in conjunction with the Video Collection smart snippet (but remains optional). The Video Collection List smart snippet on its own does not function. Further, placing any module between the Video Collection and the Video Collection List smart snippets will render the List smart snippet invalid.