Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – BSkyB Group
This article forms part of a study on social media usage amongst FTSE 100 companies.
Each company in the FTSE 100 index was reviewed on its usage of such social media tools as RSS feeds*, blogs, online video, podcasts and social media platforms like Flickr and Facebook on its main website and on occasion, on websites of well-known subsidiary companies.
*RSS feeds are a simple way of delivering fresh versions of a website’s content to online readers automatically.
According to the Guardian.co.uk Business Glossary:
“The FTSE 100 index comprises the 100 most highly capitalised blue chip companies on the London Stock Exchange, representing approximately 81% of the UK market.”
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Here’s how media giant, BSkyB (BSY.L) stacked up.
| FTSE 100 Company | RSS | Podcast | Blog | Online Video | Audio | Facebook, Flickr, etc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BSkyB Group | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
………………
Online Video/Webcasts: Yes
Usage of Social Media platforms: Yes
(Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg etc)
According to Yahoo! Finance:
“British Sky Broadcasting Group, better known as BSkyB, plays an important role in the British TV and radio landscape. BSkyB has an expanding niche market – satellite broadcasting of TV programs through paying channels. It is one of the main suppliers of this market.”
My pre-evaluation expectation of how the company will fare:
RSS feeds and online video from the get go. This is a media company after all…
Commentary:
BSkyB is often referred to as Sky in the UK and for the rest of this article I will be doing so. OK, lots of images on the homepage. No video. Until you follow up a news story. To be fair there are prominent links to Sky Player, Sky’s TV download service on Sky.com.
Sky News in contrast has online video, RSS feeds and podcasts for several News categories from ‘Latest Headlines’ to ‘Showbiz News’.
Sky News also manages a very comprehensive Video News section with links to a dizzying array of video content.
As far as blogging goes, Sky shows a keen understanding of the immediacy of this publishing platform and like the majority of UK mainstream media, is successfully combining professional editorial with ‘blogger journalists’.
They claim to have a British first with Sky blogger Paul Bromley being the first “Viewers’ Editor” in British television history.
In Paul’s own words:
“My job is to promote interactivity with the viewers – encouraging you to contact us with your stories, pictures and videos as well as comments on the day’s news and the channel’s coverage of events.”
Fair enough.
His blog posts are certainly well read and appear to attract a good number of comments. Here’s his latest (as of time of writing) a post titled The Birth Of “Obamania”.
Sky seem to be doing a lot of things right as far as social media is concerned. There has been a lot of investment in online video and blogging on the Sky News site. Recent news about its forthcoming addition of cross-site social networking tools move them several steps ahead of the competition.
And, for the record, Sky is currently the only company covered so far to have ticked every box in the Social Media toolset evaluated for this study (see table above).
However, I do think there is one thing that can be improved.
Recommendations:
- Rename ‘Bookmark tools’ to ‘Share’ - Renaming the ‘Bookmark tools’ link for adding Sky content to the now ubiquitous list of social booking/networking sites (del.icio.us, Facebook, digg etc etc) could really improve usage of the service.
I initially thought Sky wasn’t encouraging users to share content online.
On closer inspection I realised that this was actually happening but using a slightly curmudgeonly named ‘Bookmarking tools’ link after articles.
Renaming the ‘Bookmarking Tools’ link to ‘Share’ or some snappily titled equivalent or just simply highlighting it better may enable some of their great content to grow more legs on the internet.
………………
What do you think?
Are you a customer, employee, shareholder or stakeholder of BSkyB? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this review. What would you like to see BSkyB doing more of in terms of social media? More archive video? A CEO blog, perhaps?
Share!
Need any help?
Do you work for BSkyB and want some insight into some of the ideas published here?
Or perhaps you look after marketing for BSkyB and would like a quick chat about putting some of those recommendations into practice. Contact us.
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- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – BT Group
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – BG Group
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Admiral Group
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – British Land
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Centrica
