A missed opportunity – Carrying on the Twitter conversation

I am beginning to see and hear at the end of a lot of shows and adverts on tv now… follow us on twitter etc… Indeed Cathy Newman – aka @cathynewman who is one of the anchors on the channel 4 news programme with John Snow – aka @jonsnowc4 is now pretty much saying at the end of every channel 4 news programme… and don’t forget to follow me and Jon on Twitter….

Whilst I accept that this is a good start, to me it is well short of what they could and should be doing. Instead of merely saying follow me and Jon etc…Its all in the language.. I would be asking people to join in the conversation with us…Now a small difference I know but it would make people feel that they were actually part of the show rather than just bystanders waiting for the broadcast style messages from Cathy or Jon…

I would also be encouraging people to live tweet into the show whilst they are on air, to get live views, opinions, ideas, polls etc… All this is really possible as so many people now watch tv and at the same time are on their laptops, ipads, or smart phones. Some even have both open at the same time. So to me that represents an excellent opportunity for a conversation to be carried on.

The same applies to adverts on the TV. You know the things that you fast forward to get back to the programme. They are more and more saying follow us etc… but they could and should have an immediate call to action.. Again follow the conversation and tweet us etc.. Twitter is real time and people I am sure would love the opportunity to carry things on after an advert or the news has finished.

Interestingly Cathy Newman from Channel4 news after I tweeted her with some of my ideas did tweet me back with this..”we are working on some innovative stuff along those lines so watch this space”  be great to see what they come up with..

What are your thoughts.. Please feel free to comment in the box below. Have I got it wrong?