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With Rio 2016 Just Days Away NBC Announces Their Full Social Media Push

The Opening Ceremony in Rio is now just three days away, and NBC is still making announcements about their already expansive coverage. Rio 2016 will not only be more digital than ever, it will also be NBC’s biggest push across social media platforms.

NBC just announced their plan for a massive range of social media coverage throughout the Games of the XXXI Olympiad. We already covered their Buzzfeed partnership, which will feature a ton of Snapchat coverage. And last week we dove into NBC’s newest partnership with Facebook.

They didn’t waste much time getting started with their huge social media campaign for Rio. In an effort to engage a younger audience, NBC kicked off their Rio 2016 coverage with their “Social Media Opening Ceremony” last week. Ryan Seacrest, who will be in Rio hosting NBC’s late night coverage helped host the event that featured YouTube and social media stars. The day-long event reached almost 50 million people. Seacrest will also host a late night highlight show featuring all the best social media coverage of that day, throughout the games.

The Olympics are famous for their torch relays. This year NBC is running their own “GIF torch relay.” The relay began August 1st and consists of NBC affiliated social accounts from around the world passing a torch emoji every half-hour. @NBCOlympics kicked it off, and the relay will end with @TodayShow passing the final GIF the morning of the Opening Ceremony.

For all of this social content NBC has teamed up with a slew of social media influencers to help them produce content across various platforms. Some of the biggest names include Flula, The Fine Brothers and Logan Paul. Paul will help engage his millions of fans live from Rio at events, beaches and nightlife spots. The Chainsmokers and Nervo will help music fans get excited for Rio with Olympic inspired playlists on Spotify.

NBC plans on having around-the-clock social media coverage. They listed their 100 best social media handles to follow for Rio in April. The list includes athletes and NBC employees. The goal is to have a lot of unique and behind-the-scenes coverage from a variety of sources. NBC will have a ton of exclusive coverage of athletes, breaking news, real-time scores, interviews and more across their social media accounts.

Facebook and Instagram will have up to 20 highlight packages a day from the different events. Facebook will also host a two-minute recap show every day. The social giant’s live streaming capabilities will be on display with interviews of athletes and on-air personalities throughout the games.

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NBC will essentially be trying to constantly engage across an array of social media platforms. The biggest ones will be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. To help drive the conversation and make it more unique they are introducing the Rio 2016 emoji keyboard. The 60 custom emojis and GIFs are available at the App store and on Google Play.

NBC’s goal is to draw the younger social media-based audience to their broadcast coverage. Rio’s time zone allows the media giant to have a ton of live coverage. They will have 6,755 hours of coverage across the 19 days on their array of broadcast networks, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Their marketing budget is estimated to be $100 million. NBC’s push to be ubiquitous across every major social media channel hopes to help them connect with a younger audience. But they are still trying to draw them to their broadcast or live streaming coverage, where they make the most advertising revenue.

We are only days away from the Olympic flame being lit in Rio. And NBC seems to be ready to make 2016 interactive and engaging for millions of fans.

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