9-25-2012
If you find that your ?social media isn?t working,? you must take a serious look at how you are executing social media. Do you have a plan or are you following the herd? Are you engaged? Do you understand how social media is like building a relationship or are you using it only for advertising? If your social media is not working and you want to turn it around, start by asking what you might be doing wrong? Here are five of the big wrongs and how to turn them around:
1. You?re not looking at what others inside and outside broadcasting are doing to be successful and networking with those people, watching what they do, considering the variety of their content, and how they engage their chosen audience to help you be more successful with your listeners. To be truly successful, you must be unafraid to seek out those that are really hitting home runs and engage them on how you can become more successful with your goals in social media. No one is an island ? especially in social media. The more resources you pull from, the smarter you will look at the end of each day.
2. Your content is too selfish; it?s all about you. In social media, it isn?t all about you. In fact, like your over-the-air audience, it should be all about your relationship with them, what they need, what they want, and how they use your content to fill needs and wants they have in the social media environments of their choice. When you make the choice to really focus in on what your listeners want on air and in social media, you will have the most powerful tool imaginable to make things truly happen for your team. Results will follow.
3. You don?t participate ? you just push to ?listeners? and hope they will do all the ?work? of spreading your great content to the market. When you make your plan to push content that is engaging and of high quality to listeners and you decide to engage them, too, you will have taken a supersized step in a positive direction. That will result in actual engagement. They will circle back to boost your results automatically.
4. You?re not ?into? building relationships. You just want listeners to do what you say. This reminds you of a guy that just wants the one night stand. He isn?t interested in building a relationship or enjoying a mutual good time. Of course, his target (and yours) can feel this insincerity. When you start to truly engage listeners and actives in social media on their ground and invest in the relationship building between your personalities and listeners in social media, you will see results steadily grow.
5. You don?t experiment. You?re only following a well-structured plan. In social media, you should consider experimentation and trying new things to be about 20 percent of your overall plan. You?ve heard the saying, ?Play it loose.? In winning friends and influencing people, you need to play it loose and experiment to find what works and focus on giving your actives (listeners) what works in the social media environments that you are choosing to use to benefit your show or radio station.
As always, I recommend you seek out the book (or ebook) ?How To Win Friends & Influence People? by Dale Carnegie.
Finally, I leave you with these important key points (which may seem really simple, but they are powerful truths). Follow these keys in your social media and actually thrive:
-- The golden rule
-- Help others with what they are interested in
-- Give others content they feel smart to share
-- Make others look good
-- Recognize that social media is a place where people seek validation; give it to them
Radio has such a large opportunity to engage listeners on the social media platforms their most active listeners choose and become larger in their market than ever. However, individual radio stations and personalities should have a content plan and should give openly of themselves in social media to help, benefit, and entertain others. If you do this, you can turn around your social media and get real-world results that will validate how critical you are to your company and its long-term success. And that?s worth doing.
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
