April 25, 2012True confession time. I've always been more interested in talk radio than music radio. I could never get around the basic truth that an Usher song on my station doesn't sound any different or better than the same Usher song my competition could play. The only place I could see an opportunity to differentiate my morning show from the rest, and seize the competitive advantage, was during the talk breaks. It always worked. Why did it work? Because that's where human-to-human connections are made over our airwaves. I never knew a song, liner, or sweeper to make a human-to-human connection with anybody. What I said, whether I made listeners laugh, cry, or think, bonded them to us. So much so that they were loyal to us. Remember listener loyalty? They were giving it to us back when we were earning it.
So now an inner-industry debate is raging about whether or not talk radio is connecting with people too much, tapping into their emotions too much, relating to them too much. The message has gone out, "Hey you talk radio hosts, maybe you better pull back and tone it down." Are you kidding me? Now you want to take the one format left where human beings are the product, and where the results for the format are strong, and make it less compelling?
Radio Ink talked to syndicated talker Neal Boortz about the coming "less impactful" movement in talk radio, led by Mike Huckabee and Mike Smerconish. Boortz, with characteristic candor, says, "[Smerconish] is not compelling or exciting. The listeners are not going to react with overwhelming enthusiasm to somebody like that. It can be a liberal, a libertarian, or a conservative. If [listeners] are entertained, they are going to tune in." It blows my panties off that radio managers still actually have to be told things like that?but apparently they do.
What's this got to do with social media? Well, the exact same thing applies to your Facebook posts, your Tweets, your Pinterest pins, your YouTube videos, whatever. Your social communities look to you to entertain them. Your radio station is most likely in the position of being the primary, if not lone, source of locally generated entertainment. Even if you're not allowed to entertain on the air anymore, how dare you bore the living hell out of your social audience with one "who cares?" post after another?
Boortz also stated his feeling that syndication is destroying the supply of good local talk show hosts. "The talent pool is very shallow." Shallow? The talent pool is a dry lakebed. Not because there aren't any amazingly creative people out there who could put on a great show, but because radio managers won't give them the mic. After all, they might (shudder) interest somebody!
So if the on-air talent pool is shallow, how's your social content talent pool doing? Did you know you even needed a social content talent pool? If you don't have social content talent, then who's doing your posts? And what are they posting? Is it interesting and entertaining to your fans? Are they engaging with it? Are you stirring up reactions on your social streams or do you keep it nice and "toned down"?
You have amazing assets. You have a radio signal that's free and easy to get. You have multiple social streams. And you have an established brand your local audience samples heavily and repeatedly in search of entertainment. If you're putting up boring, marketing-heavy posts and tweets, you're betraying both your brand and the people who are trying to like you.
Mike Stiles is a brand content specialist with the social marketing tech platform Vitrue. Check out his monologue blog The Stiles Files and follow him @mikestiles.
(4/27/2012 12:15:50 AM)
Mike puts another one out of the yard and into a parked attendant.
Indeed, whoever said "If you tell a person something long enough, they'll believe it." was both a liar and a fool.
The stations promoting the online position of: "This is us digging us and so should you." are wasting resources and tiring the rest of us out.
(4/26/2012 8:42:09 AM)
Spot on Mike. Great points about communication.
In my "live" in person workshops I have learned it is the stories that engage and make the content stick. With social media we have discovered the same thing...ENGAGE...ENGAGE...ENGAGE. Come on Radio People, listen to Mike, he speaks the truth.
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