Social Media and TV – Doctor Who

Ok I’m going to let my geek side show. I admit it I’m a fan Doctor Who, see I told you. I have to admit that I have been a fan since back in the day.

For those of you who are not sure what the show is, here is a brief overview. It’s about a Time Lord who travels time and space and what adventures he gets into with his companions. It’s a show created and produced in England for BBC. It started in 1963, took a break in the 90’s and came back in 2005. The show is the longest running science fiction show in television history.

Well, the current Doctor is regenerating and the role is going to a new actor. This happens every so often, and the current actor David Tennant has been one of the most popular in the show’s history. He decided to leave and a new actor Matt Smith is now going to be the Doctor.

During this entire going on, I went to Facebook to join the official fan page. To my surprise they didn’t have one. BBC and BBC America both have pages. The show has a very loyal and devoted fan base. There are hundreds of websites, blogs and such devoted to the show. With this amazing fan base that most shows would kill for I think BBC is missing some great social media promotion tools.

Here are some recommendations:

  • Create an official fan page just for the Doctor Who Series.  – BBC could put out the newest information for the show and promote with special videos, pictures and information.
  • Create an official fan page for each Doctor – There have been 11 actors that have played the Doctor. They could create a meeting place for each of the 11 doctors. Such as, what they are up to now, shows they are appearing on the BBC or US, conventions they will be at and etc. Maybe this would be for the actor themselves to do, but still would give you a fan base to draw from.
  • Create an authorized site repository – This means, find bloggers, websites and such that are big fans of the show. Then give them access to exclusive pictures, videos and information that is not out to the general public. Star Trek that was in theaters this past year did this exact program for bloggers. It was an amazing success. Fans were able to get pictures and have the rights to use them in their posts about the movie and it was an over whelming percentage of positive posts. Which meant this created an enormous amount of buzz on the internet before it was even released.
  • Create a Doctor Who twitter account that you send out info about the show, the schedule, important dates in the history of the show and such.
  • Lastly, and this is purely a personal gripe. Update the US Site to mirror the UK site. Allow for watching full shows, and the behind the scenes show “Doctor Who Confidential”, and create real and in depth content for the web. The American site at BBC America seems to be an after thought.

This is just my take, because Science Fiction fans are some of the most loyal and dedicated fans. This should be leveraged and they can make a better connection to the fans.

Tim is the founder of Element33. A social media agency specializing in education, management and strategy for small businesses. He comes from a traditional marketing agency but has embraced all things digital. He considers himself a marketing nerd and believes that all marketing is tied together. This means no matter what silo you are in, social, email, seach, etc, changes in one will affect the other!

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