1-22-2014
By Loyd Ford
Having a plan for social media means more than simply posting contest information on Facebook and Twitter. It means more than having content about the stars in your format or bikini girls showing off for the camera. It actually should mean more to radio stations than just what value it may have for drawing people to your on-air or lifestyle (yes, your format lifestyle). Perhaps we should look at the importance of social media planning in establishing value for your station, cluster, and company in 2014.
1. Your sales department should be a part of your planning for social media because your marketing department for small- and medium-size businesses should be seen as experts in the local market, able to give fresh ideas to existing, new, and potentially new clients to improve their customer flow. Solid social media and digital profiles for your team can expose your company to more local-direct revenue.
2. Development of non-traditional revenue can be encouraged by having your sales, marketing, and on-air teams connect with local events important to your listeners and following up with connectivity ?moments? with those assets on social media, in social media (direct in-box email), and with follow-up calls to further establish your involvement and launch opportunities to connect with those events while also driving non-traditional revenue to your station, cluster, and company.
3. Are you utilizing your on-air team and leveraging their fame for digital or social media dollars on Facebook and Twitter or other social media platforms? Radio is so connective and ? if your on-air team is doing an excellent job of connecting to listeners in social media as well as on-air ? there is no way you shouldn?t plan to gain access to revenue for influence. Others are doing it. If you are not, why are you inactive?
4. Social media planning will allow you to connect your on-air, your website, and your loyal-listener email together with audience, and grow assets that should be generating additional revenue opportunity for you if those opportunities are created in a smart way that works for the audience as well as your advertisers.
5. Radio is visual and you can use visuals on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media to connect a story for advertisers as well as for your station and cluster images. So, ask yourself, are you putting enough value in your social media by making sure visual is a big part of your planning and are you using it to connect audience, advertisers, opportunities, and outreach?
6. Are you exploring other ways to generate digital-only revenue in 2014 to complement your over-the-air revenue and the connectivity tools at your fingertips?
You should value the open channels to grab more attention, create high-quality content, and expand the ways you make money in 2014. There is no time like now to develop your strategy and really put a premium on the quality and focus of how this can impact your ratings, your revenue, and give you additional lanes to evolve your business in the 21st century. If you don?t have a plan or you are challenged in creating one, you should reach out to folks who can be helpful, ask questions, and see how you can engage in the simple creation of a strategic plan for social media that exposes your business to connectivity levels that should mean more revenue for your local cluster this year and growth for years to come.
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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