It’s easy to get stuck in the mud in your social media if you don’t have a plan. Almost everyone in radio has some kind of active social media content plan…or something that started out like a plan. But when is the last time you reviewed it with your team and freshened it up together?
Freshening up, going into Fall 2016, means trying to tune up and engage followers on their ground, but it also means being visual and providing a variety of keys to reaching the listeners you most want to attract and giving them specific benefits or “enhancements” for engaging you.
- Perhaps the number one thing you can do is to get into the lives of your listeners on social media by reacting to their posts and engaging them on what they share. You can do this in a variety of ways with praises, shares, prizes, and flat-out comments relating to what is being discussed.
- We still believe that you want to make the sharing of video the predominant way you communicate “posts” with listeners. This means other than responding to something they are doing.
- We would encourage you to try to think listener-first. Specifically, if you are posting first, is your post going to help a listener, entertain a listener, make a listener laugh out loud, or visually stimulate a listener (or a variety of these things)?
- Do you have roles for different on-air personalities and have you thought through those things they are passionate about? And have you thought about how they may match up with groups within your audience that could increase their passion for your personalities and station?
- Get out of your rut by surfing to see what other stations, markets, and even stations in other countries (and TV) are doing with audience in social media. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas and shake up the old to achieve new opportunities.
I preach this again and again, but life now is visual over words. Emotion sometimes over everything else. We are in the business of connecting with listeners. They believe us or want to believe us. They want companionship. That’s radio. Pair radio and social media and freshen your content to attach listeners to your personalities more passionately, and bring them back to your brands more often, and you are the w-i-n-n-e-r.
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: https://about.me/loydford. Get his radio-social media content sent directly to your smart phone or email for free here: www.rainmakerpathway.wordpress.com.
