Reimagining Engagement: How I Helped Transform NBC’s TODAY Show’s Digital Presence

When I joined NBC News in 2010, I immediately recognized a missed opportunity to build social engagement around the TODAY Show. At the time, the digital team was primarily posting article links and quotes from the broadcast. Meanwhile, celebrity guests were tucked away in a cramped green room with little more than a television playing the show. On some days, multiple guests would gather, casually taking selfies and chatting while they waited to go on air. I remember thinking, “How are we not capitalizing on this?”

To fill that gap, I began arriving at the studio early, often before my official workday began, just to be on set capturing behind-the-scenes photos. This was exactly the kind of authentic, engaging content made for social media. However, traditional show policies at the time discouraged photography on set. I believed that mindset had to change.

Another opportunity we were missing was on the plaza during our summer concert series. Thousands of passionate fans would show up, yet hardly anyone tagged our accounts or used hashtags, mainly because they didn’t know what they were. Back then, social handles and hashtags weren’t as easily discoverable, and our ability to post signage was limited due to landlord restrictions.

A family arrives a full 24 hours early to be first in line for the Justin Bieber concert on the TODAY Show Plaza. This was one of the first photos I started the TODAY Show Instagram with.

After repeatedly raising this with leadership, I decided to take action myself. I began showing up at 3 AM, hours before the show, to meet the fans lining up for concerts. I brought handmade poster boards displaying our social handles and personally introduced myself to the crowd as the show’s social media manager. I took photos of the fans and shared them on our platforms as a way to acknowledge and thank them. This simple gesture sparked a ripple effect of reposts and comments like, “OMG, the show featured us!” Our social following grew, and eventually, there was an expectation that I would always be there to greet and document the fan experience.

From that foundation, we launched custom hashtags for each concert to help track performance and drive engagement. My colleague Melissa Blum later proposed custom VIP lanyards that included our social handles and hashtags. Fans wore them proudly, and they became a massive hit.

My colleague Melissa Blum and I are engaging with the TODAY Show crowd on the plaza before the Coldplay concert.

Eventually, the TODAY Show redesigned the studio and installed a large digital display facing the plaza to showcase hashtags and social handles to the crowd. I collaborated directly with the NBC Graphics Team on the display design and partnered with a company called Mass Relevance (now Spredfast) to enable real-time curation of social content. This allowed our control room graphics producers to feature live tweets and photos during the broadcast, making us one of the earliest adopters of this approach in live television.

The new digital display outside of Studio 1A on the TODAY Show Plaza to display social to the crowd. I worked directly with our internal graphics department and a company called Mass Relevance (Spredfast) to build this functionality.

Following our momentum on Instagram and the concert series, our social growth accelerated. When the show’s Instagram account first launched, no one wanted to take on yet another platform. But I noticed the stage manager frequently capturing beautiful photos behind the scenes. He had unmatched access and understanding of the show, so I recruited him to manage the account. His contributions helped ensure a steady stream of authentic content.

All of this progress eventually caught the attention of the show’s executive producer, who invited me into strategy meetings to reimagine the green room experience. From my very first month at NBC, I had been advocating for a more modern, content-focused space where digital creators could collaborate with guests and capture behind-the-scenes moments. This idea ultimately evolved into the “Orange Room.”

I was the original brainchild behind the TODAY Show’s Orange Room.

Although the concept shifted from its original vision, the Orange Room became a visible extension of the set with a dynamic LED wall, designed to integrate digital elements into the show. Initially intended as a vibrant hub for live streams and interactive content, it was later used more as a cutaway segment space. Occasionally, it fulfilled its purpose by featuring spontaneous guest interactions or behind-the-scenes moments, but it never fully realized the creative potential we had envisioned.

I worked with the Snapchat team and TODAY Show producers to coordinate the first-ever partnership with a major broadcast media organization to exclusively announce the TODAY Show Concert Series lineup on Snapchat.

While the Orange Room is no longer in use today and now serves as a storage area, I am still proud of the cultural and creative impact it made. It led to some of the most memorable moments in the show's digital evolution. More importantly, it proved what could happen when we challenged traditional boundaries and created space for innovation.

The sad state of the Orange Room which is now used as storage for set pieces behind the main show set.