‘Too many CBC Twitter accounts’

So says Jill Atkinson Creative Director, Advertising and Media at CBC.

“We had a Facebook page with 400-plus followers, there was zero content on the page,” she wrote in an email. “And we said ‘Come on, what a missed opportunity.’ 

“The plan is to reflect… our television priorities and to create a community that acts as a conduit to the show’s individual promotional websites,” she wrote.

Step back and let her show you how it’s done, kids. Watch and learn:

CBCType: New CBC Battle of the Blades photos are really smokin hot’

3 Comments

  • Anon says:

    It’s all for the ex-BBC failure Rachel Nixon to rearrange the deck chairs on this side of the Atlantic after she redecorates her imperial office.

  • Tornado says:

    What you’re sensing is a continued move of cbc.ca and others to be under the control of communications and marketing people.

    Remember that redesign of cbc.ca a few years back? When a few experienced people got in a room, did their best, and the site was ultimately just reworked by communications and RS?

    A marketing person wants to tell people what to put on twitter. That’s because social networks are another opportunity for free promos, right Jill?

    Early warning for yet another failure to connect with audience. Every marketer that follows me on twitter or tries to connect to me on facebook gets a pathetic sigh and an ignore.

  • The Wind of Jill Atkinson says:

    Is this woman “working on” the CBC strategy for social networks like I’m “working on” this blog right now? Is this woman making decisions? I wonder if Paul McGrath was talking to the right person?

    And what’s with Paul’s writing these days? Always full of spelling and grammatical mistakes and loops in logic, packed with platitudes, they don’t make much sense at all. I know he’s probably reading this, so what’s up, Paul?

    Anyways.

    Currently the CBC’™s social network strategy is ad-hoc. It’™s essentially a victim of its own success.

    What does that even mean? First off, CBC.ca has no valid strategy. And the CBC has no social network strategy. And I get the feeling that when you say “social network strategy” you mean “Twitter.” So how can it “essentially” be the victim of its own success? How is that even measured?

    Forgive the rant but that is just crap, crap writing.

    ’œThere are way too many CBC Twitter accounts,’ she said, ’œthe volume of CBC sites *is* massive, and should be culled.’ Atkinson said there’™s nothing wrong with individual shows having social networking accounts, but they need to reflect the CBC’™s priorities, ’œnot just because it’™s a cool thing to do,’ she said.

    Having worked at CBC.ca for years, I can attest that doing something because it’s cool has held the dept in good stead since it’s inception. There are a lot of reasons for this but the main one is that lacking a larger vision, and confused about “CBC’™s priorities” when the mandate was written before the invention of the internet, the only thing left to do was follow everyone else and pretend to know what we’re doing.

    Because we’re Canada’s Public Broadcaster we should know what to do, or at least look like it.

    And sitting in a meeting and talking about Twitter makes you sound like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t understand what Twitter is, yourself.

    ’œWe had a Facebook page with 400 plus followers, there was zero content on the page,’ she wrote in an email ’œAnd we said ’˜come on,’™ what a missed opportunity.’

    My cat has more followers than that, and all she posts is “MEOW” every 2 weeks and to be totally honest with you I write that myself cos she don’t type too good.

    The trick is to balance the CBC’™s adoption and innovation on these networks, without overloading the audience, ’œIn a nutshell the whole point to doing this is to value add for the audience,’ Atkinson said on the phone yesterday.

    Huh? I thought the whole point was to reflect the CBC’™s priorities? “In a nutshell?” WTF? And if the audience is interested in 1000 Twitter accounts, why not give it to them? Because you think some accounts should be “culled?” Who makes that decision?

    I’m sensing something here… yes… I got it now….

    A CBC exec with nothing much to do, trying to make a name for herself and will get nothing done and then move on in 2 years.

    Yes, very clear now.