by Radio Ink Blogger Carl Magnusun.
Social media is meaningless if you have nothing meaningful to give your listeners. Give them excitement, give them unique content, give them characters, give them what they?ve come to rely on your station for and not only will your social media strategy click into place much easier but pretty soon you?ll be generating revenue. Rodney Whitaker is the Interactive Sales Manager at Maverick Media in Santa Rosa, California. Whitaker describes how a simple idea turned into a sponsorship using social media.
?We came upon the idea for River Rarities purely by a real life experience. Mike Waterman, the River program director, and I had been sending YouTube videos to each other of live performances of our favorite classic rock artists. Then it hit us. If we enjoyed seeing these videos maybe our listeners would too and River Rarities was born.?
Whitaker describes how his idea was put into action. ?At 9AM each weekday Lauren Marks announces the River Rarities song of the day and invites listeners to view the video on the stations Facebook page. Listeners view and comment and engage with the station and each other via that wall post. There?s the typical comments about how they miss being able to have hair like that (some of them just miss having hair), they tell stories about when they saw the band live, they suggest other vintage concert footage for us to feature, and so on. Then we have a special sponsor branded webpage with the River Rarities archives where listeners can see all of the past videos we?ve featured. Listeners love it!?
This is all sponsored by a local live music venue and Whitaker says the advertiser loves it. "They just renewed for another 6 months. It?s become a center piece of their advertising with the station and allowed us to leverage more revenue and strengthen our relationship with the client. But equally, if not more important, we?re creating more value for listeners and more opportunity for engagement. And we?re doing it with social media which doesn?t cost the station anything.?
Whitaker advises other broadcasters to "get after it" when it comes to leveraging social media to create revenue opportunities. ?Years ago when we first started streaming a client asked me, ?Are listeners changing their habits because of where and how you are delivering content?? Actually the opposite is true and to an even greater extent today? we are changing what we are doing because of where and how consumers are consuming media. If ?Radio? is defined as the box in the corner or the thing in your car with a dial, we?ll go the way of the dinosaur. If we evolve? we can win. Listeners are using social media so whether you make money with it or not you better be there. If you?re there why not be creative and find ways to engage your listeners and make money doing it? Some broadcasters are uncomfortable with Facebook because they see it as competitive rather than complimentary to their broadcast and online properties. To them and everyone else reading this I shout:
?DON?T WORRY ABOUT COMPETING! DO WHAT YOU DO BEST AND THERE IS NO COMPETITION!!!?
Whitaker says broadcasters should use the most intimate mass medium wisely. "Radio now has the tools to reach out to virtually every single listener and make their pocket vibrate?yet we struggle. We struggle because we?ve lost our mojo?and that lack of excitement and sizzle and relevance comes through in boring and stale voice tracks, websites and social media posts. You are in the business of making great audio content and serving your community with the music, news and entertainment they need/like/want?wherever they are (on-air, online, mobile, social). So do that more. Do it better."
Whitaker can be reached via e-mail at rodneywhitaker@maverick-media.ws
Carl Magnuson is a blogger for Radioink.com and Co-Creator and Director of Sales, Social Radio LLC. He can be reached via e-mail at thevoiceofcarl@gmail.com
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