July 7, 2011
by Mike Stiles
Facebook?s new Video Calling feature was announced with much fanfare this week. It allows for real-time, face-to-face video chats within the Facebook environment. Sure Skype has been around awhile and gained significant traction. But this incorporation of its video communication power into a social network that?s already an astonishing hub of interaction is worthy of the buzz it?s getting.
You, as radio managers, will have to contend with this new communication tool, which you will do in one of two ways:
You could incorporate it. Your jocks are taking video calls as well as phone calls. Your listeners are getting to know your jocks better, and the bond between listener and talent is getting stronger?harder to break should some other station or show come along. Your receptionist is answering video calls and interacting with your Fans as if they were standing in your lobby. You?re meeting with your managers in other markets via easy group video conferences. You?re video-calling your clients on a regular basis and are strengthening those relationships, building their trust in you.
Or you could dismiss it. Listener Facebook video calls to the jock wouldn?t work anyway, because there is no jock. You?re mostly voice-tracked and automated. The few jocks you do have stay fairly unpresentable. Your receptionist isn?t in the lobby because she?s also the Promotions and Traffic Directors. PD?s in other markets that you manage continue to misinterpret your emails and build resentment. And your clients have never seen you. You don?t have to worry about them severing their relationship with you, because you have no relationship with them.
Granted, the above example is taking it to the extreme (or God forbid, maybe it?s not that far off the mark), but the point is, amazing tools, technologies and innovations in social networking are coming every day. Are you going to jump on them to enhance and empower your radio business? Or has the manic drive to operate with as few humans as possible cut you off at the knees and eliminated your ability to capitalize on them?
Takeaway: if radio approaches every tech advancement as an annoyance, or if it views social networking in its entirety as an annoyance, inevitable innovation will continue to stack up against it and leave it by the side of the road.
Mike Stiles @mikestiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files.
Add a Comment Send This Story To A Friend
