6-11-2012
by Loyd Ford
There are many hats to wear as a radio personality these days, but more and more stations are expecting personalities to have a meaningful participation in social media. Unfortunately, many personalities, stations, and broadcast companies are simply putting content on Facebook or Twitter without a plan or even an idea about how they can contribute something truly meaningful in the social media space that will positively impact their broadcast brand and their career. So, here are four simple guidelines to make your efforts matter for your radio station and your career.
1. Put learning at the top of your list of priorities and think like a child. In other words, times are changing. If you are a parent, you know children adapt to change faster than adults. They soak it up. Recognize a powerful change in your job description caused by listener empowerment (because of Facebook, Twitter, and other options they have for their time) by learning as much as you can about new technologies and trends and really think about how listeners are using social media and what they are using it for so you can capture their attention and bring them to your content.
2. Look for partnerships all the time. Choose wisely your point of content entry and how you want to be perceived in the social media environments important to your listeners and constantly seek partnerships with people, blogs and entities that are in the area of content development you want to influence. Doing this is not only a way to be helpful to others, it is a way to become famous, or more famous, in your market. Use it. You can do so by linking blogs or other content with someone else or co-writing content; it can be developing yourself as a "go-to guest" on other content video or opportunities in print, television, the Internet, and more. Consider this your outreach machine and create opportunities for yourself.
4. Always work to lead listeners back to your broadcast brand and your own company-owned "opportunities." Too many people in our business participate in social media without a plan and without focusing on a goal. We are still in the broadcast business and if you take a paycheck from a broadcast company your goal should still be to lend support to the actual brands you work on today.
If you are a personality on radio at this time, recognize that the world is changing and bite off opportunities to develop additional career tools for yourself by developing a presence in social media that eventually towers over your day job. This is one way you can create more value in your career. If you follow these four simple guidelines with passion and creativity, who knows where it will lead?
Loyd Ford 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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