Creative Nerds Social Account Manager Tom Gamble discusses the challenges of growing 5USA on social and the processes behind a successful campaign.

At the start of our 5USA journey, the goal was to tap into and increase the ‘female skewed’ 35-45 viewer demographic that previously existed on the channel. These types of viewers seemed to watch 5USA for a sense of ‘worthwhile escapism’. The channel was perceived by non-viewers to be the least varied, meaning our social output needed to be the opposite: varied, engaging, shareable and relevant.

To achieve this, we needed a strategy that fused useful show information with relatable, social content in the form of images, GIF’s, videos, games & competitions.

We began starting off with a foundation of short episode clips, highlighting exciting moments in upcoming previews. It was important for us to develop a feel for our audience, understand what shows performed best and to find the perfect tone of voice for the individual platforms. Once the ‘big hitters’ became apparent (NCIS, Law & Order and fantasy crime procedural Grimm), we started to create more unique and bespoke content for the channels.

Focusing on animations, we used show assets alongside our own creations, giving us the flexibility to create evergreen content outside of the channel’s weekly schedules. We created and developed games such as ‘Guess The Show’ & ‘The Line Up’, as well as fantasy scenarios like ’Dream Crossover’, allowing us to build an active community of fans across multiple shows.

Although fun, shareable social content is what was needed to grow this particular channel, the page still needed to exude authority. Viewers needed to feel like this was a place where they could come to find out when their next favourite show was on and what specific episode it was.

This is clear to see in our posts both on Twitter & Facebook and on-going community management helps viewers understand more about the shows they love on a direct & personable level.

As well as creating diverse video assets, the channel was crying out for some relevant, branded humour. Knowing the type of audience we were appealing to, I took it upon myself to pair static images from the show, with silly ‘dad-humour’ captions, creating a strong brand personality as well as engaging talking points for the fans & followers.

The next step was to then match our native strategy with our paid strategy. Using a mixture of our own insights and existing 5USA information, we began building our target audiences with the hope that our ‘dad-humour’ & character-driven content would prevail (especially with the older audiences).

We were in luck. As the ads started to gain traction, we began to pull-in audiences from many different demographics. The channel now is a fairly even split between females aged 25-34, 35-44 & 45-54 and we’re beginning to grow our male audiences too, with more selective targeting and creatives.

Three months & nine thousand Facebook followers later, we can really begin to see the potential that 5USA has to be one of the UK’s leading TV, social platforms and it’s been a joy to have been there from the very start.