Social Media
How does communication work when a global pandemic affects every aspect of life? That’s the issue that faced me in March of 2020 as the voice of WQED’s Facebook, Twitter & Instagram accounts, Not only did Covid create high levels of zoom fatigue and virtual-event burnout, but there was a backlash to social media itself due to the toxic political discourse magnified by a particularly ugly Presidential election year.
Luckily, I was able to reflect all the way back to our original patron saint, (& my personal hero) Fred Rogers for guidance.
Enter #FridayFred. Weekly posts across our platforms that paired a photo and a quote from Fred Rogers. Simple, but effective. Reach numbers ranging from the tens of thousands to the millions, our highest-engaging posts ever.
Based on the success of those singular postings, a shift was consciously made to raise the ‘Fred quotient’ wherever possible, especially on Facebook, which emerged during the pandemic-year as our top-engaging platform. Up until that point, Twitter had our largest following.
Utilizing this approach, I managed to grow audiences across all of our platforms. Here is a look at the numbers from 3/1/20 to 3/1/21.
To put that into real world terms, it means that during the pandemic year we gained an average of 845 new followers per month, or 28 new followers per day!
“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” – Fred Rogers
– Dave Hallewell (WQED Senior Producer, Promotions & Social Media)
Social and Digital Totals for March 2020 to March 2021
(with Year to Year comparisons)
- YouTube views: 2,129,997 (+69%)
- YouTube engagements (likes, comments, shares): 46,220 (+50%)
- Wqed.org pageviews: 1.6M
- Wqed.org/edu pageviews (all pages that begin with wqed.org/edu): 107,394 (+23%)
- Wqed.org unique pageviews: 80,250 (27%)
- Facebook followers grew by 16.3%
- Instagram grew by 20.4%
YouTube Views by Video
YouTube Views by Viewer Age
Engagements by YouTube Video
