Discovery

For the discovery session on blog posts, we prepared a simple script that focuses on understanding the users' current process and workflow of creating blog posts and embedding contents. We also assessed the most useful feature and any improvements they would like to see.

During the discovery session, producers from each brand demonstrated their workflow in-depth while we screenrecorded.

Use cases of each brand

• Syfy: Tagging is the most important functionality in Syfy's blog, as they often use the result page with tags to promote the posts. They can use an image, an MPX video, or an external video as the header. They also have option to stylze the tile on the show's landing page.
• Chiller: There are three different post types depending on the use case. News Post is the general post, TV Show Blog is for the show blog (there is only Slasher at the moment), and Chiller 13 is for The Friday 13 listicle posts. As they are very specific to the use, the layout in the CMS is tailored accordingly, e.g. Chiller 13 has 13 sections to add each item.

• USA: Currently only has show-related blog but looking to have general posts as well. It's easy to embed MPX videos, and they come down automatically from the posts when the videos are expired. They can set promo information that will appear at the show's landing page. It's difficult to embed external sources as the producers have to use raw HTML code, but they are looking to improve that.

• Bravo: They have the ability to set authors to casts, sponsors, or their staff. A blog posts can be displayed in a cast page, a show page, and a microsite, depending on the setting from the blog page. They can set multiple related shows, so that the post appears in all of those show pages. They have option to choose a video as a banner and also to choose a pull quote to appear in the show's landing page as a tile. There can be various kinds of embeds within the post itself: images, videos, embeds, listicles, and cast bio. Related posts at the bottom are curated.

While rewatching the session videos, we took notes to recapture the brands' current practices and needs. There were several common functionalities across the brands: abiltiy to embed the MPX videos and images, set a video as the banner, make URL alias, selecting related shows, etc.

As expected, Bravo had the most extensive functionality and use cases on blogs. They can embed not only the images, videos, and external embeds, but also media galleries, playlists, and cast biographies as well. They were also highly focused on making the post appearing in all the appropriate places without having to create multiple promos and driving traffic to different posts.

Other entertainment brands also used blog posts to embed images and videos, but had less structure in embedding the media. USA is still using raw HTML editor to include the embed code, which is difficult for the editors to use.