PBS Kids Summit: PBS Parents Update

2010
• 5.5 million unique visitors to the site
• mostly but al moms
• 70% between 25 and 44 years old
• 70% had a college degree or higher
• majority of children are preschool age
• 82% are likely or very likely to return to the site


Top-level objectives

AUDIENCE – grow the size and loyalty of the Parents user base

TECHNOLOGY – evolve PBS parents into an anytime / anywhere (just in time) digital service

CONTENT– make our content fun and engaging

ENABLE producer and stations to engage the parent audience and fulfill business goals.

A New Web Series
“The Parent Show” – concept is that the host (angela santomero) goes out to the street and talks to people about parenting issues. All content is shortform 2-3 minutes.

Outreach Efforts (Tracey Wynne)
Blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Want to be considered ‘a friend in the trenches’ with parents. Don’t want to tell parents what to do but want to talk to them as a friend.


BLOGS – The Parents Show Blog, Expert Q&A, Kitchen Explorers

The Parents Show
For shows, there are opportunities for related links in terms of the show AND blogs.

Expert Q&A
The Q&A has been around for several years, updated twice a month. Shows can use this platform to have conversations with your audience.

Kitchen Explorers
Launched Sept 2010 – there’s a lot of conversation about feeding kids. PBS Parents want to be part of that conversation. Encourages kids and parents to get active in the kitchen, at the same time learn aspects of science, math, healthy eating. There’s a lot of education in the kitchen! Exploring possibilities for discovery.
For shows, there is a spotlight area where they are able to promote PBS Kids content. Food related promos. If there are related games, activities related to food, this is the place they promote it. The blog posts also have related links to kids content.

Social Networks
Facebook as 15,000 fans
Twitter has 122,000 followers, 1,600 lists. It has a strategic content mix and helps to foster conversation.


SITE REFRESH (Mary Hope Garcia)

- used a system called Crazy Egg to see what actual pages users are clicking on and helped inform site restructure.
- Added a fun and games section that compiles the best of all sites’ game content.
- Highlights popular content based on Google analytics and surveys conducted. Eg. Child development tracker and activity search.
- Also began to feature video of interest from across PBS and various stations.

A new voice, a new look and feel
- new voice more friendly, witty, less academic
- less illustrations, more eye catching photography
- provide a permanent solution to provide a way for producers to port content.


BENTO
- is their new CMS, Jengo based.
- A goal is to create better user experience.
- Using consistent UI across all brands.
- Make it easier to navigate through dropdowns
- Provide social tools to start communicating with your audience. Polls, commenting tools and blogs will be available to producers.
- Bento will capitalize on an ongoing effort with PBS Kids to build efficiencies.
- Producers will provide the assets, PBS Kids will build the pages, then producers can update the content whenever they want.
- Sites will continue to showcase uniqueness of each brand, highlighting imagery and color palette.
- Taking away heavy lifting of site development, want producers to create great content




Future of the PBS Parents Site

Increase user engagement
- age and stage: facilitate content exploration by age and stage
- activity search – make it easy to browse activities
- customization deliver content based on user’s profile

Build efficiencies in site development
- further develop Bento
- capitalize on the in-house expertise
- easy to update no html necessary

Stengthen brand
- grow and improve content offerings
- reach audience in other platforms, mobile, new newsletters
- engage audiences with social tools.