Posting to Social Media from Myriad Playout v5/v6

Introduction

Myriad Playout v5 and v6 have several ways of sending posts to social media platforms (currently Twitter and Facebook) and it can be confusing understanding the link.

The two most powerful uses for this feature is to be able to place posts regularly within your log - for example to forward tease a song that's coming up, or to allow Voice Tracked shows to ALSO post information alongside links.

For example, you could record a voice link that says

"We're giving away 10 tickets to this weekends Park Party, I've just tweeted out the link to the special access site that you'll to go to enter the giveaway - check us out @myradiostation"

You can then add a social media post into the log near that item so that when the voice link plays out, the tweet is also sent, just as you would have done if you were in the studio presenting live.

Important note about posting to Twitter:

In March 2023, Twitter stopped allowing 3rd party products to access their platform for free which has stopped Myriad OCP v5 from being able to post Tweets on your behalf. 

However, the good news for Myriad v6 users is that the Myriad v6.1.2 release of Myriad OCP can now be configured to use your own Twitter account to post up to 1500 tweets per month on your behalf if you apply for a free Twitter Developer account - about  2 per hour. For more information about setting this up, see this article.

Note: This does not affect posting to facebook, which currently continues to work in both Myriad OCP v5 and Myriad OCP v6.

How does a post get from Myriad Playout to a social media site?

Once Myriad Playout determines that a Social media post needs to be sent, Myriad sends the message to post, along with whether to send to Twitter, and/or Facebook to Myriad OCP SE, which in turn then submits the message to the social media site.  

Posting "Now Playing" information for every song

This is quite easy to setup, you just go into OCP SE and add in the "Facebook" and "Twitter" outputs - HOWEVER! We generally recommend you don't actually do this!

If you post about every song you play to social media, then you will find that Facebook and Twitter will start to block your page or account every few weeks. Automated posted is really frowned on by both platforms, and posting an update every 3 and half minutes will definitely get picked up.

From an audience viewpoint it's also not ideal, as no-one wants their timeline flooded by a post from their favourite radio station every few minutes, so they will unfollow you quite quickly.

Configuring Myriad Playout to connect to Myriad OCP

So the first step is to make sure that you have installed Myriad OCP SE on a suitable PC that is connected to the internet, and to have configured Myriad to connect to it. The first time you run Myriad OCP SE, Windows will ask if you want to allow it to be connected to through the Windows Firewall. Make sure you tick all the available network types click OK.

You enable the connection in Myriad Playout by going to the Settings menu, then Database Settings then Database Settings then click on the Stations Tab.

Click the "cog" icon on the Station to open the Station Settings Window

Then click on the Connections tab and enable the Send Now Playing information to Myriad OCP SE, and enter the computer network name, or IP address of the computer that you installed Myriad OCP SE on.

Finally, click OK on that window, and OK on the Database Settings window.

You may need to release On Air Control and re-take it, and you will briefly see an orange "Connecting to OCP" panel appear next to the On Air button as Myriad Playout establishes the connection to OCP SE.

Sending a message to Social Media

You send Social Media Posts by adding the to the Scheduled Log as Social Media Log Items. These can either be added manually by right clicking and choosing "Insert before this item" and choosing "Social" or from the Edit ribbon, on the Add Item dropdown. 

Of course, they can also be scheduled in advance by either Myriad Schedule or Myriad AutoTrack SE.

You will then see the Social Media Message Window where you can enter the message, and select whether to send to Twitter or Facebook, or both:

There are some quite powerful options in that window as well:

Inserting live content from a file:

You can insert a "file tag" which Myriad then uses to automatically add the contents of that file at the point the message is posted.

These files are stored in the "Social" sub folder of the main myriad data location. For example, you could have a file called "weather.txt" that is updated reguarly, then you can add a Social Media Post that will then read that file just before it is posted, so the post is then always up to date with the latest information:

Inserting an OCP Tag:

You can include OCP tags that will tell OCP what information to dynamically include when it posts the message. For example you could have a Social Post at the start of every hour that will post the artist names for songs that you will be playing this hour:

Coming up this hour we've got songs by <OCP_NEXT01_ARTISTNAMES>, <OCP_NEXT02_ARTISTNAMES> and <OCP_NEXT04_ARTISTNAMES>

Here we are deliberately skipping over the 3rd artist so that we aren't always just posting the names of the next 3 songs that will play.

This will then give you a post like this:

Important: OCP Standard can only output information about the current and next  songs, you will need to be using OCP Pro if you want to post information about songs that are further down the log. You will also need to alter the setting in Station Settings to say how many items ahead you want to send to OCP.

Configuring OCP SE to post Social Media Posts.

There are 2 types of information that OCP can post to Social Media - Social Posts and "Now Playing" information.

Social Posts

These are the main type of post we've been discussing in this article, and the good news is that there is no configuration needed to make them work. The first time a Social post is sent from Myriad Playout you will get an Authorisation prompt from Facebook and Twitter to authorise OCP to post on your behalf:

For Twitter you will see a window similar to below, depending on the version of OCP you are running you may see it referred to as the P Squared Tweeter, or the Broadcast Radio Tweeter. Enter your account details, and you will be displayed a pin number that you enter at the top of the window and click OK. OCP doesn't store your credentials, and you can revoke OCP's access at any point from the twitter website.

For Facebook, the process is similar, but you may not need to enter any pin details depending on how your account is setup

Now Playing Posts:

As we saw right at the start of this article, it's very easy to add a Now Playout output, but it's likely to get your page or account blocked. However, if you do want to enable it, then it's as simple as clicking the Plus icon and adding the Facebook or Twitter Output:

Step 1: The Facebook Username isn't actually used to authenticate with Facebook, that comes later, but we suggest entering it here so you can keep track of which is which.

Step 2: You will need to enter your facebook page ID - there is a great tool at https://findmyfbid.com/ which will find this out for you.

Click OK and that's it.

The first time a Now Playing update is sent, you will see the same login windows as above as this allows you to post different information to different accounts.