8-6-2012
What makes social media so special? Why should you spend time and resources on it? Shouldn't the limited staff you have be involved only in advertising-related business on-air or making appearances on behalf of your brands? How can you use social media to strengthen your hold on advertisers?
Let's take a look at ways you can grow audience and opportunity you can bank on.
1. You can make your staff the experts in your local community on specific topics and engage advertisers to sponsor them. By carefully laying out a social media plan that includes specific content roles for personalities, you can hyper-focus on local topics that advertisers will pay to "own" also. You should even (especially) think of categories that are not traditional radio advertisers so you can expand your revenue base.
2. In addition to having a product-based strategy that has high-quality content designed to actually lure listeners to your on-air brands, you can assign your personalities "influence" opportunities you can charge advertisers for in today's social media environment. Just be careful to not allow this to dominate what you are doing in social media environments and don't make these "influences" direct advertisements.
3. You should make video a major part of your content on social media. Radio has a unique opportunity to generate original video content that listeners will seek out and watch. In the oldest of ideas, you can include advertisers with "product placement" at events and in video as a part of your social media strategy.
4. Your sales people can also contribute to social media with specific content focused on small business in your community. Usually every staff has someone who can provide a unique point of view and helpfulness for advertisers. This is aggressive behavior, but if you have a specific strategy that your staff understands, it can make a larger difference over time. Your staff (and your brands) will have an edge and additional marketing tools to generate additional dollars.
Thinking "out of the box" is a specialty of radio pros. A lot of radio teams think social media takes large amounts of time. However, most of your time should be used in building the actual strategy to meet specific goals you have for your brands and your revenue. If you do that, your social media can be generated and judged for real-world results. That can make all the difference in the world between you and ALL of your ratings and revenue competitors.
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. Reach out to Loyd via e-mail HERE.
Visit his Facebook radio social media page HERE.
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