Social Media for Radio
Many of the stations we work with and consult want to use social media to market to their listeners. Unfortunately, most do so with very little regard for developing a comprehensive strategy. It is more of a hit or miss approach that yields little additional traffic to a station’s website or additional listeners to the station. Another point that broadcasters need to understand is that social media can also be effective at reaching potential advertisers. This is, for most stations, not even a consideration at this point. Let’s talk a little about what your station needs to consider when marketing to either its listeners or potential advertisers, using social media
Reaching your listeners
If your social media campaign is not driving users to your website, or introducing new listeners to your station, then it’s time to reassess your campaign goals. There are many marketing options available in social media; from video contests to custom applications making it easy for a station’s message to get lost in the approach.
Get creative with social media to promote your station
Some stations are closer to understanding how social media can drive website traffic and create additional tune-in and awareness for their station. In order to be more successful radio needs to use social media in unique ways that will promote their marketing objectives while keeping listeners engaged with their station. Many companies outside of the industry are using social media successfully by activating consumers by involving them in tasks that create awareness and further understanding for their brand. I’ve included the following steps for you to consider when developing your social media marketing plan.
Define a clear marketing objective
Develop a marketing plan for your social media effort. What is the marketing objective? What do you want to accomplish and how will you know that you have succeeded? Social media is viral marketing. In order to be successful with present listeners, you may want to introduce them to new aspects of your station, a special contest or digital offering that you’ve just introduced. But whatever the new station feature is, you need to include a task that requires the potential listener to share their involvement with their social network. This is critical to the overall success of your social media effort.
Invoke the “Kiss Principle”
Like most of us your listeners are going a hundred miles an hour each day, so it is imperative that you focus on four things to ensure you campaign has a chance to be successful:
K. Make it easy to understand the task
I. Have clear, concise directions
S. Make the incentive relative to the station
S. Make submission of the task easy
There are many good examples of promotions that have followed the above steps to create a social media success story. Here’s one good example…
FedEx customized package campaign
It’s not possible to send attachments on Facebook. Lazerow saw an opportunity here for FedEx and developed an app with which Facebook users could send photos, links, and videos in a customizable FedEx package. This showed up in the newsfeed and users could check their package in the in box. Lazerow purposefully kept the app that simple as he has seen that the most expensive and complicated apps don’t become a success.
• 100,000 installs in 72 hours
• More than 300000 active users in six days
• Most active Facebook app for three days
• The uninstall rate was less than 10 percent
• People from over 200 different countries have sent a package.
Finally, it is important to understand that social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter each have a different audience. Before you develop a social media marketing plan for your station, make sure to educate yourself about the differences of each platform’s audience.
Next week we’ll look at social media and how it can reach our prospective advertisers.
Eric Corwin
Founder
Impact Target Marketing
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Essex, Ma 01929
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www.impacttargetmarketing.com
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