By Spencer Kitley

The 2013 State of the Union address by President of the United States, Barack Obama provided the perfect opportunity for Raycom Media to shine with its real-time live coverage of the address. After last month’s superb syndication of the U.S Presidential Inauguration, Raycom once again enjoyed great success with its syndication across more than 20 local television sites for the President’s annual address on Feb. 12.

Raycom’s syndication efforts allow them to centralize their expert live chat contributors and engage with live television viewers and even those away from their television’s in multiple markets as Obama announced his plans for the upcoming year.

In addition to its syndication efforts, the Raycom team offered an excellent experience for all viewers by delivering a variety of content types in an effort to appeal to all demographics. Below are a few examples of the outstanding variety of content that was included.

State of the Union coverage content highlights:

Twitter and Polls: The State of the Union coverage included pre-selected Twitter feeds from trusted sources that added context and expanded the breadth of information. Raycom also enjoyed the option of manually searching for and adding content within the EventStudio for moderated Twitter inclusion. In addition to Twitter, CoveritLive polls were injected into the event with frequency to allow an engagement opportunity for the larger percentage of viewers.

YouTube and LiveScores: Prior to the address and at times during the president’s speech, Raycom utilized the ability to embed YouTube videos that provided context from last year’s State of the Union and portions of the live address. Throughout the course of the evening, Raycom also entertained and informed viewers interested in sports with a live automated NBA scoreboard via CiL’s LiveScores feature.

Viewer Comments and Photos: In addition to providing expert commentary on the President’s address, the event producers utilized CoveritLive’s robust moderation tools to inject selected comments to create a well-rounded balance for the event. The producers also allowed relevant user photos into the event for further context.

Infographics: As a part of its social media inclusion strategy for the live event, Raycom chose to automatically include Twitter feeds that delivered compelling infographic material.  Trusted external social sources are great content resources for this type of material if pre-made internal infographics are not available to insert via the CiL Media Library.