<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The Social Brands Series is supported by Spredfast, a social media management platform provider helping organizations unlock social business potential. Discover best practices &amp; proven tactics for using social in the enterprise with the 7 Whiteboard Sessions for every Social Strategist.\n\"Team Coco\" became a rallying cry for fans of Conan O'Brien during a grassroots campaign to get the redheaded comedian back to late-night after a spat with NBC in 2010. The domain TeamCoco.com was actually registered by a Conan fan who relinquished control so that the real Team Coco \u2014 a digital media team that manages the talk show host's web presence \u2014 could disseminate content to promote the show. The site launched on March 11, 2010, in tandem with a 30-city tour, \"Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television.\" On September 1, 2010, Conan announced via Twitter and the Team Coco YouTube page that the new TBS show would be called Conan, so it's safe to say the entire program was built on a firm foundation of digital and social media.\n\"Conan himself really credits social media with being instrumental in the continuation of the Conan brand,\" says John Wooden, executive producer of Team Coco Digital. \"[Social] is really in our DNA, and it's something we take very seriously and put a lot of effort into.\"\nMashable spoke with Wooden about what Team Coco is doing, why it's been successful and whether we can expect a Conan Pinterest page any time soon \u2014 just imagine the board devoted to redheads.\nMeet Team Coco\nTeam Coco is comprised of ten full-time people \u2014 an executive producer, product lead, engineering lead, social lead, web video editor, etc. \u2014 and a few contributors.\nConan himself is \"deeply involved\" in crafting the strategy and the editorial calendar. He has multiple digital meetings every week and fully understands the benefit of the online audience, both for his brand, his tune-in and his sponsors, says Wooden. Conan is undoubtedly the hippest and most digitally savvy host in late night \u2014 he's had segments about putting his house on AirBnB for $1, mocked Final Cut Pro X, announced a Bonnaroo lineup on Vevo, lampooned a Groupon Super Bowl ad and embraced a Twitter \"Pale Whale\" for the debut of Conan. So a big digital strategy makes sense not only for the Conan brand, but for the Conan O'Brien brand, too.\nNot surprisingly, TBS has been 100% behind Team Coco's digital strategy. Wooden describes the network's support as \"fantastic\" and adds that because Conan's audience is the youngest in late-night TV, the digital integrations and wide reach make the show \"tremendously appealing\" to sponsors.\nA Multi-Platform Approach\n\n\nIn addition to TeamCoco.com, which is a veritable gold mine of Conan tidbits and UCG, like the Coco MoCA (Museum of Conan Art), Team Coco maintains a presence on myriad platforms \u2014 Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, GetGlue, YouTube and Tumblr. And Wooden is the first to admit that it's time-consuming. \n\"We\u2019re pretty disciplined about scheduling [content], and we strive to program natively for each platform as much as we can,\" he says, explaining that each platform gets a lot of love and attention from the team. \"The platforms are like wives in a fundamentalist Mormon marriage \u2014 we're dutiful about sharing our time.\" Each day, exclusive material is seeded to various networks and there isn't much overlap \u2014 Tumblr content might not go on Facebook, and YouTube videos might not be shared on Twitter. Certain platforms have their own material and franchises, like Facebook's F-Cards and one-liner jokes on @TeamCoco. Then again, the lean team looks for \"opportunities to realize certain economies of scale,\" so that their efforts get more mileage. So some photos and content will be shared across multiple platforms, but each platform maintains its own distinct flavor, which gives fans a reason to visit all of them. The platforms are also very well integrated on other sites, so that when you're on Tumblr, you'll see social buttons to find Team Coco on other platforms. \nBut at the end of the day, TeamCoco.com, the apps and the social satellites are an extension of the show. \"We strive to be multi-platform in everything that we do \u2014 the show is feeding digital properties and vice versa.\" Which is why on-air franchises like Fan Corrections get posted online, and TeamCoco.com is treated a hub where fans can go to see anything from the broadcast that they missed.\nHere's a breakdown of what Team Coco does on various platforms, along with relevant statistics ... and keep in mind that these numbers are just for Team Coco's properties and not that of Conan as an individual, which gives the brand even more reach.\n\n\nFacebook: F-Cards have been one of Team Coco's most successful campaigns, likely for their humorous utility: They \"take the toil and drudgery out of Facebook communications.\" For F-Cards, Conan pre-records a series of videos that friends can post to other friends' walls for holidays, like Valentine's Day or birthdays, or for more mundane occasions, like embarrassing your relatives or unfriending people. Wooden says F-Cards came out of a discussion about what Team Coco could do for the audience on Facebook. \"We wanted to do something special because we see our highest levels of engagement on Facebook,\" he says, referring to the Facebook Page's 1,808,527 Likes. \"We were just brainstorming about what we could do that would useful and really native to that platform that riffs on what it\u2019s like to be Facebook user.\" Since Team Coco is full of heavy Facebook users, they asked themselves what they would want. Over the last year, there have been 70 F-Cards, and Conan has been involved in the F-Card development process from the genesis. From a pure traffic and engagement standpoint, Wooden says F-Cards have been a great success.\nGetGlue: Given that Conan is a media company, it can reap the benefits of the media-oriented social check-in service. \"GetGlue is sort of a different animal in that out of all the platforms that we\u2019re engaged with, it\u2019s more driven toward tune-in than directing people to toward digital versions of content, but we certainly like having it the mix,\" says Wooden. Thus far, there have been 265,904 check-ins on GetGlue, and Wooden says these users really enjoy Team Coco's engagement on the platform.\nTwitter: The Team Coco Twitter has an audience of 273,370, feeding them one-liners, observations from the Team Coco office and content from some of the other platforms. Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter tend to get retweeted by Team Coco, helping the show to continue a dialogue even when it's not on air.\n\n\nTumblr: With a clear understanding of the Tumblr audience and what it wants, Team Coco populates its Tumblr with GIFs, behind-the-scenes pics, videos and funny cartoons. In short, it's viral Tumblr gold. The content here is entirely visual and even includes a few videos from the other platforms, serving as a traffic driver to other Team Coco properties. The Tumblr sees a ton of engagement, with posts getting hundreds and sometimes more than a thousand notes.\n\n\nFoursquare: In November 2010 and 2011, Team Coco worked with Brooklyn interactive agency Breakfast to create a Foursquare-hacked Conan blimp that automatically updates its location. The blimp promoted the new season and got people excited about Conan. \"The blimp was tweeting, the users could check it, the folks at TBS marketing made sure you could get a real blimp badge and other prizes \u2014 it was fantastic,\" says Wooden. In 2010, the blimp saw about 25,000 check-ins.\nThere's also a Foursquare page for Team Coco, on which there are tips for various landmarks, like Union Station and Dodger Stadium. One such tip? \"'Some people think that Dodger Dogs are great, some people think Dodger Dogs are disgusting, but I think we can all agree on one thing: Dodger Dogs are disgusting.' - Conan O'Brien.\" The Foursquare account has 77,315 followers.\nYouTube: There are nearly 35 million views on the 400+ Team Coco videos on YouTube. The page is populated with clips from the show and behind-the-scenes clips, but not Team Coco videos like the F-Card shots. The show's franchises and categories (music, celebs, etc.) are sorted into playlists for easy viewing.\n\n\nGoogle+: When it launched, Wooden admits that it was \"the butt of a few jokes,\" but the platform is now becoming \"significant\" for Team Coco. \"We\u2019re seeing real engagement there\" with Team Coco in 741,975 circles, so Wooden says Google+ is a significant part of the strategy for 2012.\n\n\nAn App: Just this week, Team Coco launched an app for Android and iOS that syncs with the show (via audio fingerprinting) as you watch, offering upwards of 25 bits of bonus content every episode. It also lets viewers interact with each other and consume content from Team Coco's web properties, transforming Conan into a true second-screen, social TV experience.\n\n\n\n\nNotably missing is the red-hot startup Pinterest. For now. \"Pinterest is something we\u2019re looking at very seriously \u2026 stay tuned,\" says Wooden.\nHe went on to explain that especially in an ad-driven business like digital media, you have to strike a balance of reach and engagement with the potential marketing benefits of a platform with your own resource constraints. For a lean team like Team Coco, much consideration goes into launching on another platform and weighing the benefits earned with the resources needed. \"As much as we adore social media, and we're reaching our fans, there are times when some of these platforms can feel like a nest full of baby birds ... so you have to get that right balance,\" says Wooden. For that reason, Flickr, Myspace and Formspring are no longer a part of Team Coco's strategy.\n\"We try to balance looking at what the tipping point is for where it\u2019s going to be valuable for us from a traffic and reach standpoint with the fact that we are a bunch of nerds who really enjoy these platforms,\" says Wooden. And sometimes good old nerdery wins \u2014 when Tumblr wasn't the traffic giant it is now, Team Coco embraced the blogging platform merely because as individuals and users, they were enthusiastic about it. \"The effort we were putting in then was not commensurate with the audience, but those users were such a core part of our core demo that we really wanted to [be there],\" explains Wooden.\nGetting Celebrities on Board\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWith celebrity guests in the studio four days a week, Conan and Team Coco have great access to big names that can pull in an audience. Like for Celebrity Flirt Roulette (above), in which Jon Krasinski, Emmy Rossum and Chelsea Handler hit on the viewer.\n\"More and more, [celebrities] see digital as another way to maximize the impact of their visit,\" says Wooden. \"We can generate more content that helps to promote their projects,\" while also offering exclusive content for the Team Coco digital properties. Plus, it's just another way for celebrities to entertain viewers and be culturally, which is a big goal for many of them.\nIs It Working?\nSo are all of digital efforts working? You can see from Team Coco's follower counts and checkins that it's a wildly popular brand, but how does that translate to tune-in? \"We\u2019re reaching so many people via these platforms, and we are confident that were driving tune-in anecdotally, but to what extent we\u2019re not yet able to really quantify,\" explains Wooden.\nDuring 2011, Wooden says engagement increased anywhere from 50% to 300% on the various social networks. The Team Coco strategy seems to be working, and it's something they take very seriously ... unlike the content itself.\nSeries supported by Spredfast\n\n\n\n\nThe Social Brands Series is supported by Spredfast, which provides an enterprise-class social media management platform helping organizations unlock their social business potential. The Spredfast platform provides a unified system for managing, monitoring and measuring social media programs for better business results. Discover best practices &amp; proven tactics for using social in the enterprise with the 7 Whiteboard Sessions for every Social Strategist."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/02/29/team-coco-digital-social/>