For those who were unable to attend Thursday’s Conference session, “Finding Your Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): Igniting Passion for the Live Viewer,” here’s your FOMO moment:

A screen behind the session’s panel scrolled live tweets from the audience. The focus was, somewhat randomly, strongly geared toward David Rosen, a fictitious character on the ABC show “Scandal.” Someone kept Twitter-bombing the guy about his great clothes, his good looks and his terrific role.

Then, the reveal: It turned out the tweets were coming from actor Joshua Malina, who plays David Rosen on “Scandal.” Malina proceeded to join the panel on stage.

“You have to make the event so compelling that people literally have a fear of being left out,” said moderator Rebecca Daugherty, VP of drama, movies and specials for ABC Entertainment Marketing.

“Shows like ‘Scandal’ live or die by live ratings,” said Darren Schillace, SVP of marketing strategy for ABC Entertainment Group. “Make something happen in your show that viewers will care about, talk about and not want to miss. Make people say, ‘FOMO sucks!’”

A big part of the strategy behind “Scandal” is to fully engage with viewers via social media, including having the actors use their real Twitter and Facebook accounts to send out messages, plot clues and inside information before and during the show. More than 571,000 tweets and more than 887,000 Facebook followers helped drive the finale of Season 2 last month to a series ratings high.

The use of social media created a “cult following” for “The Following” before the show even premiered, according to Cait Hood, VP of social media for Fox Broadcasting Company. That translated into a FOMO situation and solid ratings.

ABC’s “Pretty Little Liars” may have TV’s most socially active and FOMO-fearing fans. The target demo is females ages 12-34.

“Our audience is, ‘OMG! I have to watch,’” said Danielle Mullin, VP of marketing for ABC Family. “They don’t want their friends to tell them what happened. And during the show they want to keep the conversation going on social media.”

The show had 1.9 million tweets during its Season 3 finale in March, and 1.3 million tweets during the Season 4 premiere last week. Not only are ratings strong, but a spinoff, “Ravenswood,” set to premiere in October, had more than 379 million media impressions worldwide when the show was unveiled via social media rather than by a traditional press release.

“It is already a FOMO show,” said Mullin.

The panel agreed that social media FOMO activation is less effective with comedies than dramas, but not impossible. Concurrently, sports events such as Game 7 of the NBA Finals generate their own FOMO moments but should not be ignored.

“Keep the conversation going before, during and after to keep interest high,” said Schillace.

Even all of this shared knowledge could not satisfy everyone. As one audience member tweeted during the session, “This is great. But I’m having a FOMO moment that I’m missing something right now in one of the other sessions!”

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