So, like the weather geek I am, I was curious about the early snow that the Deep South is getting today. My first destination for all things weather is weather.com naturally. On the homepage links (under “Southern Snow”) I was greeted by three links pointing folks to various Twitter related activity.
I love when some of my favorite “things” start jumping on the social media bandwagon!
The first link, of course, is to their official “corporate” Twitter account: @TWCi
Call it the social media skeptic in me, but I was seriously expecting to see links back to the website and general weather-related news and that’s it. They have that, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that they are also actively engaging their viewers/followers! As well as re-tweeting, using hashtags, and starting to use Twitter lists. Go Weather Channel!
Then, the 2nd link, which is more timely, is about “Tweets tracking the southern snow”. When you click to that page, you see HOW they are using one of their Twitter lists: http://twitter.com/TWCi/southsnow.
They go on to say “This Southern Snow Twitter list will allow you to keep track of tweets from those following the winter storm closely including @TWCi. These tweets include local meteorologists, local weather enthusiasts, local news, and DOTs from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.”
Amazing! Great to see they are certainly more than willing to share the wealth of information from many other sources right on their website. Very smart use of social media right there.
Then, the final link, is tweets from their very own on-air personality Jim Cantore who is out in the field covering this weather event. He’s tweeting as @JimCantore, of course. They are not only tracking his tweets, but what others are tweeting to him! And, better yet, he’s talking about the tweets on-air as well as responding to people via Twitter.
It’s not only refreshing to see the Weather Channel using Twitter to report the news, but to also to reach out to their viewing audience using social media – and doing it right!
All of this makes the weather + social media geek in me squee! I’m looking forward to the first big storm in the NE and being able to track the chatter via Twitter and, of course, the Weather Channel.
Marilyn Moran is an Internet Marketing Specialist for Team and a Dream as well as her own Internet Marketing Consultancy. She is passionate about all things social media/social web as well as search engine optimization and web development. You can find her on Twitter @PhillyMarketing.
