An inside look at how The Weather Channel has embraced social media, with meteorologist and on-air host Stephanie Abrams
Social Media platforms have provided an unprecedented way to share and break news. Stephanie Abrams, one of The Weather Channel’s star meteorologists, is aware of its increasing value for broadcasting information to the masses.
At the forefront of both ultiizing social media and innovating in how to connect with viewers when they need information most, Stephanie uses social media to broadcast weather information to more than 60,000 Twitter followers and Facebook page fans.
When she is not energetically co-hosting the morning show, Wake up With Al, Stephanie travels across the country to observe and report on severe weather conditions, including hurricanes, tornado damages, and more, keeping her followers in the loop all the while.
Her dedication to keeping followers informed and involved extends passed the social web to on-air broadcasting, a space where Stephanie has seen social media make a huge impact. Every morning on Your Weather Today Stephanie does a “Weather Out Your Window” segment allowing viewers to facebook, tweet or email images of the weather in their local area, which she then broadcasts on air.
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Check out the Q&A to learn more!
A. I get all my news via Twitter now. If I’m not by a computer and I follow my colleagues, I can see whether there’s going to be a tornado watch—and I can retweet that to my people. It’s a really easy and fast way to get out information.
Q. What do you think was the biggest story that you saw over the past year?
A. I remember Hurricane Irene. People really grabbed onto our reporting because it was very easy to read, user-friendly and wasn’t complicated. Also with snow, I’ll tweet out detailed forecasts, or just even a picture or a link to more extended, in-depth stuff on weather.com. People seem to like that, especially at the height of the storm.
Q. When did you start using Facebook and Twitter?
A. I started using it a couple of years ago, and I feel like in the last year or so it’s really taken off for getting information out to your followers. I find it a really good way to interact with our viewers and keep them involved with the show—and also to learn about our viewers, what they like and don’t like. We use a lot of the stuff that they Tweet and Facebook us on air, which has changed the way we do our broadcast.
Q. Can you give us a few examples of how it has changed broadcasting?
A. I like the viewers being involved and pulling in their comments. We do something called “Weather Out Your Window” at twenty passed the hour everyday, and have people send in the weather out their window either by Twitter, email or Facebook. It gets them really excited and engaged and makes them feel truly part of the show—and they really are, because we depend on their pictures!
Q. How do you think The Weather Channel has changed in the age of social media?
A. We have a whole segment on social media now. That’s pretty huge. In all of our shows, we have a digital media center. It has been a huge impact to the way producers program a show. When there is a bad storm, we scroll tweets on the bottom of the screen that are related to the snowstorm. The weather is always a bit different than news and entertainment sources because it affects everybody whether it’s good weather or bad weather.
Q. Besides Twitter and Facebook, any other social media sites on your radar that seem useful?
A. Well The Weather Channel just started using Pinterest. I need to figure that out because that’s like the cool thing now. I really only use Twitter and Facebook.
Q. What are your predictions for the future of social media?
A. You know there’s going to be something else—because we started with Napster and Myspace, and then all those drowned out. This will drown out and something else will come. It’s inevitable in this age of technology—it’s just a matter of keeping up with it. There will be something else. If I knew what it was going to be, trust me, I would be inventing it right now.
Q. Do you think your peers in the weather business understand the value of social media?
A. I think a lot of my peers are all over it, especially when it come to tornado watches and all that sort of stuff. You can get that information out to thousands of people within a second, because so many people are always on Twitter. Sometimes it does get overwhelming and that’s one of those etiquette things.
Q. How has iWitness effected weather news?
A. We get that a lot—like, “Hey Steph, there’s an accident on whatever road!” Then, I’ll take that tweet and forward it to my news desk. It’s interesting where they’ll help us get news faster too to viewers and whomever is out there.
Q. How often does content from iWitness get used for broadcast?
A. I use it pretty frequently. When it’s someone that’s reporting freezing rain or snow or sleet, I can look at that pretty quick and say, ‘Okay, there probably is,’ just by looking at the radar and cross-referencing. It’s not on a daily basis, but it does happen frequently enough.
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