10-17-2014
It?s easy to look at social media as a ?time suck.? That?s so true if you are consuming social media. Humans are great at wasting time, and products like Facebook make it e-a-s-y.
But what if you are the content provider? Is it a waste of time then? If you have the right content strategy, are consistent and committed to being entertaining, informative, interested in the audience you would most like to engage and validating them, it is consistent for you to build value. The truth about local radio and social media is this: It?s never been about the people who will tell you what you are doing is great. There is a great hidden impact and this is the value of faith in your everyday work schedule. The same is true for your social media. You have to be willing to have a plan, be consistent, provide the right kind of content, and have faith that you have hidden and out-in-the-open impact.
As radio, we should be willing, able and focused on these opportunities in social media because we are content providers, and the business of social media and digital is very close to what we do on a regular day-to-day basis. Still, much of radio still makes the missteps the newspaper business has made: focusing on national, avoiding local. While the temptation is to go ?up? (national), the true power of radio is local. Being local built the great radio brands that some are now using as ?national cash registers.? (I?m not writing about how someone?s business model sucks; I?m just pointing out a truth about how these great radio brands were built and how important it is to reconnect many of them with local listeners before it is too late).
Radio can use social media to drive high-passion local targets to local radio brands. We can do this because the mix of our products can be exciting and engaging. If we select the right visual images, engage audiences in what is interesting about what we are doing, what we are involved with in the local market, important causes and local opportunities, we can win at harnessing the power of social media to actually grow our brands. More than this, there are digital opportunities to marry our personalities with how to get things done, learning new things, and engaging what is important in our local market. Oh, and it can be profitable.
When you look at the series of opportunities social media really represents for local radio, I encourage you to develop a local social media content strategy that allows you to draw more local people to your products, I encourage you to help local people you most want to attract, engage local charities and happenings, and I encourage you to be consistent.
Most of all, I encourage you to have faith in the hidden impact that will not come and tell you how great your social media is today. Build your tribe and make it strong. After all, radio was doing social media long before Facebook was around. Radio has always evolved and you can use opportunities to grow radio by evolving with your social media and digital efforts.
Loyd Ford is the digital revenue, direct marketing, ratings, and social media strategist for Rainmaker Pathway and Americalist Direct Marketing. Loyd 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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