3-28-2012
A lot of radio stations think they are participating in engagement on Facebook. However, this is just like anything that becomes newly accepted by the masses. There are people who think they are using it for their own brands and those people who are just doing a lot of empty promotion. How can you make sure you are using Facebook instead of Facebook using you?
Don?t spend your time judging your efforts by how many listeners ?LIKE? your Facebook page. No matter how many times I say this, it is the first thing most program directors want to do to show they are doing well on Facebook. Facebook is designed to be an effortless way for people to share instantly. Making it a game for ego by seeing how many people you can get to click ?LIKE? is not a good judge for how you are actually doing.
Have a purpose. Make sure you spend enough time building a strategy that incorporates encouraging listeners to use your brand. Building a plan means thinking about the people you want to attract (target) and building content that engages them on what is important to them. But it also means encouraging them to visit your website and actual on-air brand regularly (and I don?t mean only with contest appointments; think value).
Know your listeners and serve them. The smart programmers have always kept a strategic plan that identifies what is important to listeners in their market. They focus on the audience they want and they truly build programming that serves that audience. What you are doing on Facebook is similar in that you should be serving your audience by knowing what is important to them and placing content to engage them on what they value, but your Facebook content should also lead Facebook ?actives? to your on-air brand so you can better serve them.
Make sure listeners know from your Facebook engagement how many other ways they can engage your station. That?s right. Your listeners should very, very easily be able to see how many OTHER ways they can engage your station on the web, email, in your market and on-air. Make it easy for them to engage you and make sure they can see that quickly and easily while they are on Facebook.
It is easy to fall prey to using Facebook to ultimately promote Facebook. There is a lot of engagement on Facebook, but there are even more people involved with trying to manipulate instead of adding value to the lives of the people they want to attract to media brands like your radio station.
Take advantage of the fact that your competition is likely only participating in Facebook out of manipulation or an effort to be in the space. Do more. Take the time needed to think about the audience you want to attract, think about what is important to those people and engaging in serving them with great content they care about that also leads to your actual on-air brand. If you do, you will be participating in building important strengths for your brand while your competition focuses on ?LIKES? and really only engages ?time suck.?
READ MORE ARTICLE FROM LOYD HERE
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Loyd Ford is the direct marketing, ratings and social media strategist for Americalist and programmed very successful radio brands in markets of all sizes for years, including KRMD AM & FM in Shreveport, WSSL and WMYI in Greenville, WKKT in Charlotte and WBEE in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Loyd here: http://about.me/loydford.
Reach out to Loyd via e-mail HERE
Visit his Facebook radio social media page www.facebook.com/socialnetworking4radio
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