Mike Stiles
I put off writing this particular blog for a while. I suppose I was waiting to be wrong, or looking for a development that would change my mind. But gazing into radio?s future as things stand now, I?m pretty confident this is where we?re headed. As always, there are choices: adapt and evolve to put yourself in the best position possible, or cling to old technologies & old business models, hoping the whole ?Internet thing? goes away.
Some feel social has little to do with radio, or is just a promotional tool deserving a tiny sliver of attention. Having spent a career in radio, and now being inside the premiere social marketing platform used by the globe?s most recognizable brands, I can tell you that everything you?ve known and all your radio conventional wisdom is going away.
Don?t glare at me. In your gut you can already feel it. You already know it.
Despite the grasping of any stat showing radio still has listeners and advertisers, the writing on the wall is?people want what they want, where they want it, when they want it. Their patience for sitting through songs they don't like or 5-minute stopsets is coming to an end. Advertisers want hyper-targeting and accountability. Their patience for not knowing who heard their spot or what they did after they heard it is coming to an end.
Social addresses, or is well into the process of addressing, all of these wants and needs. That?s why not only does social have something to do with radio, radio will one day be absorbed into social networks entirely. I?ll give you a second to recoup.
In case you haven?t noticed, Facebook is setting itself up as the primary delivery vehicle for ALL content; audio, video, gaming and shopping. The new Open Graph capabilities allow for the creation of apps by everyone from Pandora to Spotify to Netflix to iTunes to Zynga to Electronic Arts to JCPenney to Best Buy and beyond. Anyone can integrate into Facebook and tap into the incredible sharing, engagement, discovery, and marketing powers it brings to bear.
Content creators have access to Facebook?s audience of users, which if you haven?t heard, is a bit large. The numerous ways they can engage that content (Like, share, comment, play, listen, watch, buy, want, etc.) not only grows the content?s audience, it builds relationships between brands and the fans who like them.
Marketers have access to these same engagement, sharing and discovery powers, with the added bonus of more comprehensive, accurate analytics, and more targeting by demo and location, than ever before. And oh yeah, people can buy their products right there on Facebook via sCommerce.
Your near future: a user who used to listen to radio will head to work in their car, listening through a Facebook app to a high-quality stream of a station they?ve customized to their personal taste. They can switch between custom stations via voice command. If they want news, weather or traffic, they can call up instant, accurate reports. What they?re listening to is being automatically shared. A friend may initiate an audio chat session to talk about a song or news item. A display ad on the car?s screen will offer a deal. Saying ?buy? will put the item in a cart for later purchase at a computer. Or, since your car knows where you are and what time it is, the ad may offer a deal on a breakfast sandwich at this place right up the road.
Seriously?what are you going to throw against that?
The above is what ?radio? will mean. It?s what it will be. You?re about to jump off a ledge, and whether or not you have anything to land on will depend on how serious you?re being right now about your social strategy.
But I like leaving you with good news. You are, at the core of your business, content creators. And the demand for content is skyrocketing. Without it, there can be no engagement for advertisers. Screw commercials. You can give marketers branded content. No, you don?t make the songs. But you can creatively showcase them. And you can go back to finding and fostering local entertainers (NOT jocks?I said entertainers), who know how to attract, build and hold audiences. Their value as product endorsers is about to explode. Got rid of them all? Sucks to be you.
You have a known, local brand that, with the right content, can be leveraged into a meaningful Facebook destination. But that is what you?ll be, a Facebook destination. Can you be cool with that? Build your app. Integrate. Create your Facebook station. Build a solid place to land.
Mike Stiles 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.
Find him on Facebook or on Twitter @mikestiles
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