NBCNews’ social video garnered 125 million views across platforms on Election Day alone. The news organization was ranked as the #1 performer on social media for Election Day by both Newswhip and CrowdTangle. Behind these achievements was a first-in-class election season editorial video experience designed for hungry news consumers using platform-first original content.
Facebook: Service and stakes
Through the election high season, beginning with the summer conventions, NBCNews used Facebook as a medium to provide an efficient path to consuming and understanding the crucial moments on the trail both live and on demand.
The season culminated with a full slate Election Day Facebook Live program dedicated to service and stakes. The goal was to provide news consumers as much information as possible about the unfolding events of Election Day while satisfying the need for a destination to receive quick, clean results.
Beginning at 8 a.m. ET, NBCNews, Nightly News, and MSNBC pages ping-ponged viewers across the country between polling places in swing states, at the voting booths with the candidates themselves, and back to election central at 30 Rockefeller Center, for 14 segments all guided by expert correspondent analysis sharing up-to-the-minute views from their unique locations.
For the first time ever, NBC Nightly News took to Facebook to live stream the first portion of their evening broadcast. On a night with such stakes for viewers, the network provided a seamless connection to their program.
As polls began to close at 7 p.m. ET NBCNews provided a live updating stream of the electoral map, fulfilling a national desire to follow the results in real-time and without clutter. The only news organization to provide such a service, the electoral maps (broken into two 4 hour streams) were shared 317,000 times and earned 48 million views.
This electoral map stream became Facebook’s 5th most viewed Facebook Live video across the entire platform for 2016, outranking every other broadcast network.
Instagram: Original Short form Storytelling
For the 2016 conventions, NBCNews distinguished itself from the news publisher landscape on Instagram by making the political events of the summer relatable through visual, personal, and community driven storytelling. The series, comprised of 16 video portraits, was called #myRNCstory and #myDNCstory and used short form profiles of people beyond the politicos. Through their eyes, viewers were given the chance to connect with the events in a much more human fashion than what they were presented with in the nightly television broadcasts of speeches from the massive convention halls.
Portraits included a balloon maker tasked with the massive drop that concluded the RNC, a member of the local welcoming committee who was there for the spectacle, and a mixed religion couple who got married in the middle of the DNC in front of a backdrop of protesters and Clinton supporters.
The series drove 430,000 video starts and was highlighted by Instagram as a best-in-class example of video use on the platform at ONA 2016 Conference.
Snapchat: Dynamic and accessible reporting for a new demographic
NBCNews sought to provide a service to the Snapchat audience that respected them as voters (many first time) and educated news consumers. Utilizing the vast footprint NBCNews commands in traditional television coverage, correspondents, campaign embeds, and producers created short form reports live from the trail. These original programs for election season began with Jacob Soboroff’s "Convention Crashers" and concluded with a wall to wall Election Day marathon of takeovers from swing states across the country.
On Election Day alone, NBCNews video snaps received 47 million views with 7 videos curated into Snapchat’s national Election Live Story, more than any other news organization.