12-11-2013
Are you tuned in to what is happening with your listeners? Do you or your program director have a profile for the local listener your company most wants to attract to your on-air brand? How do you do this outreach given that you may not have access to regular local research? Maybe you already have a regular effort involving a listener advisory board, but what do you do beyond that?
Here are a few questions to ask yourself to see how you can refine your ?tune in? and listen more directly to local listeners so your station, your morning show, can be ?in it? and move with their sense of what is important now. It can give you an edge over competitors and make your radio station sound different and more on-target with where you and your competitor should both be right now.
1. Do you know what is trending on Twitter?
2. Do you ask a few questions locally through your loyal listener email?
3. Do you spend time yourself on Facebook looking at what local listeners are talking about? Fans of your station?
4. Does your cluster have a traditional radio news team that is ?tapped in? to the market?
5. Are you friends with local TV reporters? (Don?t know any? Hmmm.)
6. Do you ask questions on social media related to local issues that are important to your local listeners?
7. Do you cultivate a short list of movers and shakers in your market so you can check in regularly (informally) and get a ?brief? on their perspective on what is important in your market?
8. Do you regularly check in with MeetUp (Meetup.com) to see what groups are being offered in your market?
I try to regularly preach that you should have a specific strategic plan, for your we are warming up to 2014 in just days. This is the perfect time for you to shift your attention to how you can be more efficient about tuning into what is important in your local market and what is important to your listeners by ?tapping in.? Spend some time thinking about how you can build an easy-to-follow strategy for making sure you are closer to local listeners, what is trending, and that you use this important information to your advantage in creating a radio station, loyal listener outreach, and social media engagement that rocks their lifestyle and interests and delivers the content they most crave every day. It?s worth the time to think about it at the end of the year so you give yourself and your team an edge in 2014.
Make your competitors next year say, ?How do they seem to be three steps ahead of us all the time?? We?ll never tell, right?
Loyd Ford is the direct marketing, ratings and social media strategist for Americalist Direct Marketing and has programmed very successful radio brands in markets of all sizes, including KRMD AM & FM in Shreveport, and WSSL and WMYI in Greenville, WKKT in Charlotte and WBEE in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Loyd here: http://about.me/loydford. Get his radio-social media content sent directly to your smart phone or email for free here: www.rainmakerpathway.wordpress.com. Reach out to Loyd via e-mail HERE. Visit his Facebook radio social media page HERE.
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