10-9-14
Friends and co-workers of the late Kevin Metheny have created a tribute website to the long-time programmer who died suddenly on October 3. The site can be found at http://www.kevinmetheny.com/ and is called "An Online Celebration of Kevin Metheny." You can send in pictures, audio, and stories about Kevin. Funeral arrangements have not been made public yet. He was 60 years old when he passed away of a massive heart attack at his desk at KGO/KSFO last Friday.
10/23/13
Greg Ross is the Director/Product Strategy and Infotainment, Global Connected Consumer at General Motors. His message to radio: "Create ways to get great content in the car." Ross says his industry no longer has to make a difficult choice about what would be put in vehicles, because of how GM now works with developers."Before, you had to pick a winner, technology or content," he said. "Changing content through software gives us the ability of not having to choose. We can work with a great idea. It's an exciting and different game. We're offering specialized and personalized content we've never been able to afford before."
Again, much of that is being done through the smartphone, and that's the way it will be for the forseeable future. But Ross did give one specific example of a company that creates excellent content and gets talked about quite a bit: SiriusXM. Ross said the satellite radio company is able to offer great content to consumers with ease of distribution, and today many vehicles are offered with a three- or six-month free subscription to the service the minute they roll off the lot. And even after the trial period expires, there the button sits on the dash, waiting for the customer to renew or showing an 800 number it's pushed. Ross' message was, "Bring new content and new ideas into the car."
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3-1-2012
NBC News and Dial Global have announced a partnership to present a new, 24-hour, radio news network-NBC News Radio. The network will be distributed to radio stations nationwide by Dial Global and will give those stations access to the global resources of NBC News. Co-President/CEO of Dial Global Spencer Brown said "Through our new partnership with NBC News, we are proud to continue in the tradition of defining great moments for radio listeners across our country.'
NBC News President Steve Capus said, "This alliance presents NBC News an opportunity to deliver our high-quality journalism to even more news consumers across the country through the expansive Dial Global network. NBC News is already America's number-one news network - now, through this new 24-hour radio news channel we can further expand our unparalleled reach and audience."
The new network will include live simulcasts of breaking news from NBC and MSNBC, and reports from top NBC News correspondents including NBC News Political Director and Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd, Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Chief Justice Department Correspondent Pete Williams and Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers. NBC News Radio will also feature Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" and David Gregory, host of "Meet the Press."
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by Loyd Ford
A lot of radio stations have Facebook pages. Not many radio stations use Facebook as a stage for listener engagement. Yet this opportunity exists every day in your world and your listeners? world.
Here are 5 specifics to make certain you are building an engaging stage:
1. Constantly build your Facebook page to be interesting to the target audience you most want to attract; don?t just try to engage your Facebook audience in contests on the station. Divorce yourself from your ?radio station view.? This way your ?events? will help build the ?tribe? you want to engage and help highly passionate advocates support your radio brand.
2. Select a cause that is important to your core target and have one of your personalities consistently engage efforts for this cause on your station Facebook page. This is a big part in helping listeners identify with you through a connection with something deeply impacting for them.
3. Use the ?create an event? feature on Facebook to invite others to radio station specific events, but make sure the event is large enough to make a strong impression on listeners who see the influence on Facebook. And you want to have your event invitations express real value to the Facebook participators. Also create your ?event? on Facebook well in advance of your on-the-ground event so you get plenty of lead time and opportunity to create influence. I will add that you should always include an on-air and website opportunity for more critical information or inside scoop.
4. Make sure your Facebook engagement is both passionate and emotional. If you take time to really focus your efforts with an actual strategy, don?t leave these important keys out of your plan. People respond to passion and they respond to emotion. If you work to seed passion and emotion into your Facebook effort correctly, your radio station will have a great payoff important for growth.
5. Respect your Facebook ?audience.? Manage your content by being careful not to stage too many events on Facebook. This is really about controlling the balance of your posts so that you remain interesting and don?t become a commercial generator for your station.
It all starts with having a plan, but social media offers many opportunities to truly create a stage for your radio station as long as you keep your creativity focused on excellent balance of content that is interesting and truly engaging for passionate listeners (who will ultimately drive your ratings).
Loyd Ford 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
Visit his Facebook radio social media page www.facebook.com/socialnetworking4radio
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Mike Stiles
On July 4 in a suburb of Cleveland, about 1,000 teens showed up and starting fighting at a fireworks celebration. They organized over the social networks. In London, rioting and looting has been escalating all week, blamed in part on Twitter, texting and instant messages. The National Retail Federation says 10% of the companies they surveyed were recently targeted by groups of thieves who planned and organized on the social networks.
Philly?s Mayor condemned teen flash mobs that left several injured in recent weeks. The deputy mayor for public safety said, "They can communicate and congregate at a moment's notice. That can overwhelm any municipality." And I don?t have to remind you about what happened in Egypt, right? Government dynasties that have ruled for generations?gone?in a flash. Would anyone care to argue with me that social networking isn?t the single most powerful communication force we will ever see in our lifetimes?
There are one of two ways to react to all this. One: ?Lord of the Flies? is playing out right before our eyes, and we have to ?control? this social networking thing. Indeed there?ve been efforts, as in Cleveland, to criminalize flash mobs. The mayor vetoed it because that?s kinda unconstitutional. Efforts to convince this genie to go back in its bottle are laughable. Anyone whose strategy is to ?keep a lid on this thing? represents a naivety that is dangerous in a management position.
The other reaction is to have, what to me, is a rather obvious thought, ?How can I make my station a driving force for positive flash mobs?? There?s always a need in your community?always. On any given day you can find a person or organization in need of help. Why not use your station?s sizable social community to come to their aide with a ?flash rescue mob??
Whether it?s a charity that just had all the toys they collected stolen, or an old woman getting hassled by the city because her yard needs to be cleaned up, what happens when hundreds of your listeners team up and respond? I?ll tell you what happens.
? BIG publicity for your station?that?s free.
? More people want to be your Fan or follower because you?re making good things happen.
? Members of your social community meet and get more connected to each other.
? You make your town a better place.
? Advertisers like you more and want to be included in future flash rescue mobs.
After the riots in London, other Londoners used social media to organize clean-up teams to come in with brooms and restore the streets. Please tell me your station thinks like this so it can remain relevant and valued in your market.
Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre.
Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files.
Find him on Facebook
or on Twitter @mikestiles
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by Wayne Ens
89% of radio sales reps say sales meetings were "usually a waste of time". The irony is that properly planned and focused sales meetings can be one of the most productive, unifying and motivating uses of everyone?s time. The sales meeting is also the ideal place to consistently reinforce and promote the company?s mission statement or battle cry.
1. Do plan and prepare meetings from a sales person?s perspective. With every item on the agenda, answer the question "what's in it for me?" from a sales person's point of view.
2. Do not use the meetings for a forum to discuss individual accounts receivable problems or other "downers".
3. Do start and finish the meeting with positive, upbeat topics. Have the salespeople each share a "good news" story about your station, your market, a sale or a client?s success.
4. Do not dwell on topics which do not pertain to the majority in attendance. Such topics should be dealt with one-on-one.
5. Do have an agenda, and circulate it to the staff ahead of time. This forces you to prepare for the meeting, and gives the staff a chance to prepare for it as well.
6. Do not be the only speaker on the agenda . . . bring in other staff members, suppliers, experts department heads or even clients to answer questions or help train the staff.
7. Do take minutes of every meeting. Minutes document answers to questions, and can keep other non-attending department heads and team members in the loop. (Try having last person in take the minutes each week!)
8. Do not circulate the minutes until you have approved them to avoid misinterpretations or publicizing confidential information.
9. Do recognize any group or individual staff accomplishments.
10. Do not reprimand anyone at a meeting.
11. Do encourage participation. Ask questions. Get staff members to present or chair certain segments.
12. Do not let the participation evolve into "mutiny sessions". Don't ignore complaints, but answer them quickly, and move on.
13. Do have them on the same day and time consistently. This way the staff can plan around them and you avoid the old "I thought the meeting was next week" excuse. (By the way, if you are getting excuses for non-attendance, chances are your staff feels your meetings are a waste of their time.)
14 Do not change the meeting day or time for ANY reason. Changing the meeting sends a signal that sales meetings are not important, and shows a lack of respect for your staff's time.
15. Do keep meetings as short as possible.
16. Do not try to cover too many topics at one meeting.
17. Do hold morning meetings. Research has proven the human mind is much more receptive, and retention levels are higher, in the morning.
18. Do not (if possible) always hold meetings on premises. Off-site meetings can add excitement and impetus to special meetings.
19.Do lighten up. Have surprise visits by Santa at a Christmas sales meeting, or have coffee and birthday cake if a member is celebrating a birthday.
20. Do not limit attendance to "sales" people. Everyone who has customer contact, from the receptionist to the accounts receivable clerk should be invited when the agenda covers ground of interest to them.
The litmus test is to ask your staff how they feel about sales meetings. If they say you have too many, they are too long, or they are in the 89% that think meeting are ?usually a waste of time?, yours probably are!
Wayne Ens is President of ENS Media Inc and can be reached via e-mail Wayne Ens wayne@wensmedia.com
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by Radio Exiles CEO Brian Baltosiewich
June 15, 2011
In my first blog entry, I explained to you why it?s important for every radio professional to podcast, or at least learn how. Let me summarize: Because it?s just what you do. It?s in your blood. It?s who you are. Radio may have quit you, but you cannot quit radio. Furthermore, there are a LOT of bad podcasts out there. Listeners need you. Podcasting is the Wild Wild West of the industry. The new frontier. The Future of everything we?ve ever done. I can?t overstate it. If you are not prepared to be a podcaster, you could be left behind. Thirty percent of internet users listen to some sort of Internet radio.
I don?t have to tell you that terrestrial radio has yet to figure the Internet out, that it?s more than page views and slideshows of hot women. Just by reading this blog, and showing interest in podcasting, you?re ahead of the game. So, how do you podcast? It starts by knowing what you have to say, and who your audience is. This is, more than ever, up to you. Your terrestrial radio career may have had you in several markets voicetracking in several formats- until you lost track of your voice, of who you are.
Your podcast, when you are ready, will speak to very specific people. YOUR audience will consciously choose to listen to you. They will carry you with them to the gym, in their cars, at work, listening when they?re supposed to be doing something else. They will CHOOSE you, on their time, on their schedule, when it works for them. They will stop you and start you and fast forward when you touch on something that just doesn?t interest them. They will have unbelievably short attention spans and they will want you literally dropped in their laps through iTunes or RSS feeds. They are extremely high-maintenance and some are difficult to please. These are the demands you have to meet, and when you meet them, there is no feeling like it.
You will know EXACTLY how many people are listening to you. No LPM?s, PPM's or diaries. No guesswork, no gymnastics no extrapolating the numbers. If they?re coming to you, you will know, and you will know right away. Your shows will live on in your archives, and those archives will generate as much traffic- if not more- than your fresh shows. In one year you can have dozens, maybe hundreds of shows available. If you?re good enough, listeners may even PAY TO LISTEN TO YOUR OLD SHOWS. Think about THAT!
So, how do you find your audience? You?ve probably bounced around a bit, town to town, up and down the dial. People in all those markets will remember you, no matter how long it?s been. Think about who you were to them, what your voice sounded like, what made you successful. Think about your voice for a few days. Find it again. Think about your audience, who may be listening when your podcast goes live. And when you have your voice, you will be ready. Map it out. Write down the topics. Create a little outline or cheat sheet to get started.
And, Next week, we?ll talk about the mechanics of producing a podcast.
Brian Baltosiewich has been a broadcast professional for more than 20 years. His podcast website, www.radioexiles.com features professionally-produced podcasts from radio pro?s who have lost their gigs. Reach out to him at brian@radioexiles.com or through the twitter account @radioexiles and on Facebook at radioexiles.com
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by Kerry Brewer
The latest studies and research show that stations that use blogging and social media to supplement their online presence, gain more in listener loyalty than stations that do not. The use of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be very creatively used by any radio station today to not only instill listener loyalty, but to drive branding as well. As a matter of fact, by not embracing social media and blogging, you are telling today?s progressive online listener that you do not care to cater to their demographic requirements.
One of the great benefits of embracing social media to promote your station and its online streams, is that it is free. I definitely do recommend however, that if you are going to use social media, and particularly blogs, that you need an in-house staff member that knows the details of your marketing mission and can effectively create and maintain that online effort. After all, the everyday events, remotes, interviews, guests and promotions that a radio station is involved with on a day-to-day basis, has to be then translated over to these mediums by someone with integral knowledge.
Twitter is perfect for setting up a page to send your playlist information to, and display artist/title/album, album art and/or show information. This is a very easy thing to do. All you do is set up a free Twitter page, and export your playlist metadata to the page using an API script. Ok, so that may not be your expertise, but that?s why you have a tech department, webmaster, or web development firm. It takes 5 minutes and then you can start promoting it, linking it on your site, telling your listeners about it on-air, and by whatever other means you use to get the word out.
Setting up a Facebook fan page is also very simple to create and maintain. Here is another chance to promote your station and events, document interviews and guests, create discussions with fans and more. Facebook also give your listeners the ability to post messages and comments, and also click on your ?Like? button, linking themselves to you. This information is also shared with others and a viral effect takes place, pushing your brand out there even further. Listener-interactivity is the key to keeping listeners? attention longer. The more ways you have to communicate with your listeners, the higher the loyalty rate and recognition factors.
Set up a LinkedIn page if you haven?t already. This may be more applicable to the individuals in the organization, as LinkedIn is seen more as a corporate and business networking platform. It?s a great way for the execs and DJs to establish a profile, backgrounders, create links to your other social media sites, web sites and blogs and further promote your image and mission. LinkedIn also has many industry organizations that you can join and link up with others of the same business and networking mindset. Easy to do, but like the others, it takes time to create and maintain. Again, this is more of an individual thing.
Blogging is one of the easiest and best ways to promote what you are doing on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Anyone can set up a free blog using something like WordPress or Blogger, customize it pretty much any way you want, add heading, titles and keywords, and start publishing your own material intra-day of you want. You can set up an email subscriber box so visitors and listeners can join your mailing list and keep up with the station?s events and promotions. You can pull RSS feeds, and even your Facebook and Twitter posts can all be integrated into the blog using simple APIs that are already built-in. The blog allows you the ability to become a publisher in real-time, and at the same time, pull all your social media together into one nice and neat piece of online real estate.
All of these things done together, by the right person, using up-to-date content and information of interest, will definitely help to set you apart from the competition. You need to show the listener that you care about them by using these common forms of new media, which are not-so-new anymore. The right staff member that knows your organization can easily enhance and shape your image like never before. There was a famous Clint Eastwood spaghetti western called, ?For a Few Dollars More.? All it takes is a few dollars more, or a few hours more, spent on creating and maintaining your social media profile to notch yourself up in the game. It?s not ?new media? anymore, it?s a required action for every broadcaster, big or small.
Kerry Brewer is Sr. Managing Director at Securenet Systems, a leading provider of online streaming services to the worldwide radio industry. He can be reached at kbrewer@securenetsystems.net or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kerrybrewer.
(5/25/2011 6:15:53 AM)
It’s no brainer to see that social media is here to stay for good. Given vast variety of the existing channels to choose and stick with, it’s time for such a hot space to enter into a new category. There is a need for a portal to provide a quick and intelligent decision for both the consumer and the enterprise about their online connections.
A Platform to Help us to Distinguish Our Quality vs. Quantity Friends, Fans, Followers, and Companies
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flickr and others have been doing a decent job of providing additional marketing exposure and even in some cases, additional revenue. However, as more and more social networking sites pop up, how do you manage your brand across all these channels? Maybe more importantly, which one of these sites should you select as the one that will help you best reach your target audience?
This glut of information reminds me of the early 90’s when WWW was adopted broadly by the general public. Every company rushed to have a presence, to the point it became literally impossible to find the right information on the Web. That’s when a better generation of search engines – at first the Yahoo! and then Google – entered the market and helped us find the most relevant information by just typing simple keywords in their search box.
Then came Web 1.0 & 2.0 – Youtube, Flickr, myspace, Facebook, Twitter and countless others have turned everyday people into content producers, influencers and experts. We basically tripled down on the information overload How do you know which channels to select for deploying your social media strategy? How do you know which one is the right channel to let your fans and followers to find you, your products, and services? Most importantly, who is Joe Smith that is recommending that person, that company, that product?
I hope my awesomize.me can accomplish such a mission. The site is not another social networking platform. Yet the portal to all your existing social media channels. The platform helps you, your fans, your potential clients to make an intelligent decision as to which company to connect to or follow via which social media channels and why? It’s free!
Elias
CEO & Founder
http://awesomize.me