(SOCIAL) 6 Important Don'ts Of Social Media For Radio

8-24-2012

With so much focus on what you should be doing in social media, every once in a while it is good to get a check-up so you know you are not actually doing things you shouldn?t.

1. Be social -- and by that I mean don?t over-market the radio station on social media. You know the kind of personality or station I mean:  Tons of me, me, me, me and very little focus on the listener. When they do social media, it is all about the station and listening and contesting. Make sure you have a true mixture of compelling content. For me, it is okay to have contesting on Facebook and Twitter. Of course. Just make sure it is a smaller percentage of your overall content (that should for the most part focus on listeners? wants/desires and how they can use your product more for THEIR purposes.

2. Don?t do a ton of posting content without pictures and/or video. If you want attention and true engagement, think about the visual and think about it often. Posting words can create compelling content, but leaving out the visuals will leave you flat in social media (and waste a lot of your time).

3. Don?t only post written content. Also make sure you comment and like listener posts. Engage listeners on their ground (by the way, Facebook, especially, is listener ground). Simply posting what you want to say is not engagement. Get in the fast lane and engage listeners on what they are talking about. Let them know you are IN their lives and care about them, too.

4. Don?t post online content that does not match your persona on-air and the lifestyle of the radio station you work for today. Believe it or not, this is a huge no-no. Think about who you are to listeners and make sure in your planning and in your execution that you ?represent.?  If you do things in social media that don?t match listener expectations, you could be setting yourself up for authenticity trouble that will create more long-term problems for you and your brand.

5. Don?t make your content look like a plan. It?s okay to have a plan (in fact, it is recommended; if you don?t have one, you?re likely flat out wasting time or, worse, in deep trouble because of your social media). However, your posts should not look like you are gaming listeners or that you are on a strategic path of manipulation.

6. Don?t make it work. I know, I know. Less people, more work in radio, right?  Here's the thing. We are still in a fun business and listeners want to be a part of that. Still, your engagement of listeners should be fun and should always lead back to your on-air brands. So, let go and enjoy! It will pay dividends.

If you?ve been reading my stuff on social media and radio for a while, you know I believe in developing your plan first. Think of what you want to accomplish. Social media is not advertising. Now, you can use it like advertising, but you will be disappointed in the results. At the same time, you should do more than show up. Developing a plan and making sure everyone knows the plan and their role in it will insure you climb up in social media and grow engagement (and listeners). Avoid the above ?don?ts? and truly enjoy social media for helping you engage listeners in their ?social? life. If you do that, you will be the winner.

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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(SOCIAL) How Important Is Facebook? It Might Just BE The Web

4/18/12

Mike Stiles

When you think about what you use the Internet for, you probably come up with a list of the usual suspects. You research stuff, you might use it to buy something or book travel, you watch videos, you get the news, you use it to communicate, etc.

Now what can you do on Facebook? Well, you can research stuff, buy something, book travel, watch videos, get news, use it to communicate, etc.

See what happened there? Facebook has become so ubiquitous and, thanks to its Open Graph capabilities and ability to pull offsite apps into Tab views, spread its tentacles across absolutely everything people do on the Web; to the point where it has, for all practical purposes, become the operating system for the entire Internet.

Remember back in the Stone Age when the Web gurus were pressuring you to get a website up and running, telling you how essential it was? Getting that website up was definitely the right thing to do (unless you put it up only to abandon it). But ironically, thanks to the hyperactivity of technology and innovation, things have changed so fast with the dawn of the social revolution that, quite frankly, you don't really need your own website anymore.

Facebook users can access nearly every company currently doing business. They can play games with friends or strangers. They can message and video chat. They can see updates, pictures and videos. They can participate in sweepstakes and contests. They not only can get the news, they can organize the news they want from the sources they want with Interest Lists. They can do just about anything they would want to do anywhere else on the Web?all within the context of their social graphs.

Which might leave you asking the question, "What am I doing or offering on our station website that our listeners can?t also do on our Facebook page?" I think you'll be surprised when the answer comes back, "Not much." And a couple of recent Facebook developments may soon be giving the social networking heavyweight an even larger percentage of users' online time.

Development 1: They're rolling out a service in which your Facebook email and Facebook Timeline are more connected and intertwined. Not even Google has married Gmail this tightly to its Google+ platform. With this development, Facebook advances deeper into the hub for messaging and email activity.

Development 2: "Groups For Schools" is Facebook?s new college collaboration tool. This puts them firmly in the file-sharing arena. Students can share un-copyrighted files up to 25MB with groups organized around classes, frats, whatever. Other students can download the files right from the News Feed. Don't expect Facebook to stop at colleges. Business groups could quickly emerge, and Facebook's file sharing could become the hub for both business and social collaboration. If Google Docs has reason to worry, should you?

Facebook realizes they will hit a point at which bringing new users to the platform will top out. Pretty much everyone who's going to be a social network user at all will be on it. To grow further, they have to focus on engagement and the time people spend on Facebook. What better way to grow that than to offer every online activity conceivable within the Facebook environment?

Am I suggesting you shut down your website? No. Many of you have digital advertising strategies up and running on them. But are you telling listeners to go to your website or your Facebook page? Telling them to go two separate places is not exactly a laser-focused approach. Station brands that place their focus on building an actively engaged fan base on Facebook, then leveraging that community by integrating the exciting array of emerging apps and functionalities that will constantly be debuting, will be the brands operating from a position of social strength.

Mike Stiles is a brand content specialist with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files, and follow him @mikestiles

(4/20/2012 12:40:16 PM)
We have only about 3,200 followers! LOL!

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(DIGITAL) Klout: Think You're So Important

Do you obsess over your Klout score as much as you do your PPM numbers?  It?s highly doubtful you do, and I?d be worried if you did.  But for many in the socially-savvy world, this number claiming to represent how much influence you have, how much of a rock star you are in your social circles, has become quite the game, if not an all-out obsession.

If you?re on a mission to figure out just how a Klout score is calculated, good luck.  That?s an ongoing head-scratcher within the social marketing industry and frankly, it?s been one reason this score is taken by many with a far above-average grain of salt.  The conundrum is, if you don?t know what this score is based on, how can you take action steps that will get your Klout number up? 

The best thing we know how to do is to a) focus on quality of fans and followers vs. quantity.  Inactive, spamming or non-engaged fans are going to hurt you, and can be weeded out with a variety of tools such as contaxio and TwerpScan.  b) We also know that if your tweets are retweeted and your posts are shared, your score goes up.  As always, good content is the baseline ingredient for that.  So there?s the ?magic? formula, get a lot of followers who are genuinely into you, and give them content that?s good enough to share.

All well and good, but what does a Klout score really mean?  According to a new report by Brian Solis of The Altimeter Group, not that much.  He says Klout and other tools like it, such as PeerIndex, don?t measure influence.  They only measure the capacity to influence.  Solis defines digital influence as ?causing effect, changing behavior, and driving measurable outcomes.?  He says these scoring tools don?t take into account how complex influence is or the nature of relationships within social networks.

PeerIndex responded to the study saying that?s just a matter of semantics, essentially asserting the capacity to influence IS influence.  Solis says there are 3 pillars of influence, reach, resonance and relevance that determine how a brand or person can affect their social network.  He doesn?t believe Klout scores address the subtleties of these three things.  The danger is that brands will go running down the rabbit hole chasing a Klout score, while at the same time missing the human relationship elements that actually drive one person to influence another person to take specific action?such as listen to your radio station.

So what are your takeaways?  Don?t worry about Klout or PeerIndex scores.  BUT?do worry about the things that make them go up or down.  The quality of a social network fan or follower is more important than the quantity.  This goes against our radio mindset in which a warm body is a warm body, and that?s all we need.  Social is not passive entertainment like radio listening, and your fans should be actively engaged with you.  If none of their friends ever see them interacting with or mentioning your station, they are of little value.  And, in order to get your fans to interact with and mention your station, they have to be getting really, really good content from you.  They?re not going to mention you out of charity. 

When you?ve earned and built a virtual army of deeply devoted fans ready to leap into action whenever you put out the call, that?s when you?ll have influence.

Mike Stiles is a brand content specialist with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files & follow him @mikestiles

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Peter Smyth Moderates Important Forecast Panel

11-28-2011

Radio Ink's Forecast 2012 gathering is only 8 days away. It's impossible to overstate the importance of this day long event with the economy sputtering, political advertising on the horizon and competition for the consumer's ear at an all time high. Forecast is a one day event putting all the best forward leaning thinkers in one room to provide you with every detail you need to succeed in the 12 months ahead.

The first panel is most certainly an indicator of how we plan to give you everything you need to be thirty steps ahead of anyone who does not attend Forecast on Tuesday, December 6, at New York's Harvard Club. Greater Media CEO Peter Smyth will moderate a panel at 9:30 entitled: "Economic Forecasting: Revenue Expectations for 2012." On the panel Mark Fratrik, Vice President of the BIA/Kelsey Group, Mark Gray, President of the Katz Radio Group, Jack Myers, Media Economist, Chairman, Media Advisory Group and Marci Ryvicker, Managing Director/Equity Research for Wells Fargo Securities.

The panel will focus on economic predictions, the impact of the 2012 elections, how radio revenues will be affected, and the platforms and initiatives where those revenues are most likely to come from and grow.

Read more about Forecast HERE
Register HERE

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