Interacting with viewers live via Twitter

The newsroom here at WKRN-TV has been asking viewers on-air for the past few days to send unanswered questions via email about the financial issues facing our country. We've gotten a few, but no where near what I think we expected.

I've been using Twitter for a few months and have wondered whether there was enough critical mass use to introduce it as a tool for anchors and producers to interact with viewers in real time. Then I saw CNN jump head first into on-air use. At first, CNN anchors seem too reluctant to even mention the word "Twitter," sorta laughing at how strange the word sounded. It only took a couple of weeks before the anchors were saying it confidently, perhaps after using it and seeing its immediate value.

I knew Twitter had become easier to explain by showing our producers how CNN uses Twitter to interact with viewers during live shows rather than me trying to verbally explain it.

Yesterday, we gave it a try.

Last week, I created WKRN's Twitter account and asked Nashville area viewers via Twitter to send us their questions about the financial crisis before Congress they wanted answered by our financial expert Brock Kidd. We quickly got several excellent questions.

As with any new tool, our first use left a lot to be desired. The producer had taken the text of the question we used and entered it into the same on-air graphic we used for emails we received, stripping attribution and never mentioning it came from Twitter. For the record, the question came from user mDave.

Our future use will eventually become more robust and take Twitter directly on-air. For now, I want to encourage you to follow @WKRN as we slowly incorporate your live feedback into our newscasts. If you live in the Nashville area, follow @nitweet to show up on Nashville's official Twitter list of aggregated tweets. These are regularly featured in our TwitterPop posts charting Nashville's Twitter conversation on various subjects that organically flare up.

UPDATE 4:52pm - Tonight's on-air use was much better. In our 4pm show, we displayed our Twitter page with your tweets about local power rates increasing 20%. During a break, I showed the anchors how to pull up individual tweets which also shows the user's personal Twitter page. As soon as I saw what we're about to do in the upcoming shows, it immediately dawned on me how Twitter pages can become your customizable public face for our on-air audience.