3-26-2014
You know by the nature of the business you are in today that you?re in an influential position. Your radio station, or stations, have huge power and you should use it. Have you considered stepping up your involvement in local-cause marketing at the station level to give you more influence for ratings and revenue because of the passion involved? Well, if you haven?t, you should. Here are steps worth thinking about in your market. It all starts with a few questions and then gets serious for you.
1. Do you know the true top 10 local charities or causes impacting your community? Some smart programmers in the past would study the internals of local markets and make these charities or causes a big part of their ?program? to establish their radio station as a real player in the market. Why did they do this? Because, if you do it right, it creates goodwill toward your brand by some of the most important players already at the top of the market. More than this, you can create opportunities for highly passionate people in the right places to become your station?s cheerleader. Do you have enough cheerleaders? I suggest if you haven?t done this, get busy researching it. Determine which of those are appropriate for your personalities and your station brand and make them a part of your overall strategic social media content plan.
2. Do you have a read on local charities that are in desperate need of help? You are in a position where you could at least throw some light on real problems and/or opportunities for listeners and other businesses to help these charities if appropriate for your format and brand. Taking up their cause pays huge benefits for your station and makes your radio station a valuable part of the local community. As a bonus, people of power and influence will also notice you are a positive influence for the community and work to help you as well. This is sort of an indirect ?you scratch my back, I?ll scratch yours.?
3. Everything is a function of influence. Being a powerful influence in the cause arena with your social media (and dare I say on-air) can have an amazing impact on listeners and other businesses to make use of your product and placing advertising on your brand, or brands, as well. You can have a program that identifies the causes your personalities and individual radio stations are behind and ask for support as a function of PR as well as a function of sales and the direct appeal for help with the cause. You see this in businesses as diverse as your ?local? Chilis and what Coca Cola does to get ?in? the local market by supporting important causes. This is taking credit for what you do, but it is also putting your support of brand-appropriate causes in the main bloodstream of what you do as a business from programming to sales to PR.
4. How you do it is important, too. This is covered under ?Tell them you are going to do something. Do it. Then, tell them you?ve done it.? Your personalities are your direct passionate connection with local audience. Use them to engage in planned social media content strategy and make presenting charity and causes a big part of that to boost your local effectiveness, ratings, and business. Consider how you PR your charity or cause engagement. Do you pick and choose who you raise money for with your radio station/stations? Do you split the things you do so you spread your influence among a variety of causes? Do you execute a check presentation and include it in all your social media in addition to your website and media release?
5. Don?t let others tell you that you can?t be influential anymore. Others can just be a placeholder in their jobs if they want. There?s always fear when things have changed so much in radio, but supporting your community and finding ways to do that in social media as a part of your overall social media content strategy supports the business of your brand or brands. It makes you a great employee and citizen. Doing it will separate you from your competitors. Use it. Do it. Make it happen. And be proud to be more than a placeholder.
Social media can really provide you with powerful means to influence passionate people about your brand that may not have given you the time of day before.
Use it. You?ll be glad you did, but you won?t be the only one.
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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