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CNN Has Terrible Online Social Media Distribution

CNN, in general, has seemed to be behind the eight-ball really since the invention of the internet, let’s be honest…

Recently, they have sort of caught up to posting longer video content on Youtube. But, two of the main areas that they still struggle with are getting content out in a timely fashion as well as breaking the broadcast day down into good shareable internet-sized bites that will move better online. There needs to be a lightning strike edit and release team working inside the normal production team at CNN. This team should have one job and one job only, to take content that has just aired, cut it up into smaller internet-sized bites, and release it on the top social media channels with a boost budget. That’s it! The producer of this team is like your social media quarterback he has to be the best of the best. Politically knowledgable and tech-savvy as fu… Someone like me essentially. This person or persons will have to be prepared, available during the live broadcast, and on point in regards to internet trends past and present. Because they will decide what gets spliced out of CNN’s daily broadcast and cut into short internet-friendly news clips to share online.

Certain Clips Are Actually An Entire Internet Jandra

This is something that CNN needs to learn desperately. Reality Check with John Avlon for instance is not just some small section of the morning show. It’s actually, I would argue, probably the only piece of content that CNN has at all, that is perfectly made for the internet. You can tell whoever writes them spends a lot of time on it, they are quick, smart, and they hit. They also have a way of reaching a more middle-of-the-road audience, on both sides of the aisle, since they are heavily fact-based with very little to no opinion in them at all. This is what everyone is flat-out craving for in this over-opinionated world, where everyone on social media has a microphone, even your dumb racist uncle who lives back home with your grandma still. In the modern age, he has just as big a voice as someone with a political science degree! But I digress… When you have a clip like this that is perfectly sized and set up for internet distribution it needs a different distribution plan than the rest of your daily internet content. CNN Needs to look at its content in categories like full shows, recurring clips, show hosts, and more so that its online content catalog better represents the live broadcast. Then each of these content categories needs a different distribution plan based on the strength and weaknesses of that particular content category.

CNN YouTubeDistributing Reality Check Content Online

As soon as a new Reality Check airs it needs to be available online in a matter of seconds. Yes, you heard me right, seconds, not minutes. Because right after it airs, is when there is the largest flurry of people searching for it online. Who wants to share the Reality Check on their social media or embed it into a blog that they are writing. Since they are such good shareable political clips, that are short enough to share, and not so long that you lose followers on your page. It’s crucial that they get out in real-time. The Reality Checks are top-shelf internet content! As such as soon as the Reality Check airs it needs to be live on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. Different video sizes will be needed for each platform. They will all have to be edited quickly and immediately uploaded. So the team needs to be literally standing by as Avlon is live on air, then they need to receive a nearly instant copy of the segment, once the Realty Check is over. If you could pre-shoot the Reality Check it would be even better. Because then we could set the release date on social media to time it exactly with the release of the clip online during the morning show. Since the social media channels are all monetized now, there also needs to be a small budget allocated to boost the Reality Checks. To get them out to the public and past Facebook filters to start the sharing process, or start the process of sending them viral online.

Reality Check YouTube and TikTok

On YouTube currently, if you search Reality Check they do not even come up at all. If you search Reality Check with John Avlon old ones show up. If you chose the search setting “this week” or “this month” then you get ones from all types of users sharing bootleg copies of the current Reality Checks. Whenever you see bootleggers under your brand or category you know that it is a failure of your tech department. Because bootleggers only go where they can make money off other companies’ online shortcomings. Since  CNN is the real brand, the real brand content would outrank all of the bootleg versions if it was added to YouTube correctly. The entire youtube page for CNN is set up incorrectly with weird video titles that are NOT what people are searching for online and worse terrible category header titles that are generic and do not make sense for the station. CNN is a host, show, and clips-based network in that order. It’s not a general news category show or a newspaper. Each host needs a section, each show needs a section, and all the best recurring clips need their own section like Reality Check with John Avlon needs a section. Categories like TV and Media, Entertainment, Misinformation, and Fact Checks, are just terrible because no one is searching these categories online and CNN does not use them in the live broadcast either. They basically come out of nowhere.

Reality Check Needs to be its Own Section on YouTube

The CNN YouTube Channel is not a replication of the channel. It’s instead a channel trying to break itself into obsolete newspaper-type categories. Instead, they should be replicating the live air show, by breaking the broadcast down into neat sections that actually represent the network and posting them online quickly. Anderson Cooper should be a section and everything he does should be under it. Then his show Anderson Cooper 360 should have a section for just full episodes of his show. Then his best segments should have their own section as well. For instance, Anderson Cooper’s Ridiculist clips should be their own section since someone could easily watch ten of them in a row. They are all so short and funny, that they also make great internet content. You could even have a section for interviews or a section for everything Trump, and a section for everything Biden, etc. These types of sections can be added and changed depending on what’s hot in the news cycle but the main show, anchors, and show clips sections should always be there and should always be updated in real-time with the live on-air broadcast whenever possible. When a clip airs and a viewer wants to share it or write a blog about it they should be able to go over to youtube online in real-time, easily find the clips, and embed or share them online in their content. This is a bedrock principle of internet content distribution.

Right now for all the money, CNN is spending, you would think they would have come up with a way better online distribution plan, especially with all their great news content. But, for some reason, they haven’t done it yet…

 

When You Search “Reality Check” on YouTube This Comes Up…

 

John Avlons Reality Check on YouTube

 

When You Search “Reality Check With John Avlon” Old Non-Current Episodes Come Up…

 

Reality Check With John Avlon

When You Search “Reality Check With John Avlon” And Set The Filter “This Week” Only Bootleg Versions Come Up…

 

Reality check bootleg CLips

 

 

 

BONUS! The Ridiculist page is broken on the CNN website: https://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/category/the-ridiculist/

 

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About The Author

Patrick Zarrelli

Tech CEO, Aggressive Progressive, and Unrelenting Realist. @PJZNY Across the Web!!!

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