Why does social media remain an afterthought to so many? How can you turn a radio station’s Facebook page into an exciting and engaging clubhouse? How do you build a social media following and turn that into cash? To answer these questions, Radio Ink asked Sheri Lynch, co-host of Bob and Sheri and co-founder of Now! Media. Sheri isn’t just a radio maven, she’s one of radio’s earliest Facebook adopters and a social media star.
Radio Ink: You’re someone who does social media so well, through Bob and Sheri or any of your other projects. What are two things to know about social media, right off the bat, that would give managers an extra hand in getting their content right on Facebook?
Sheri Lynch: Well, it’s really such an amazing resource for radio that it astounds me that everyone isn’t all over it. But it’s not a switch that you can just flip. First, you have to know where your audience is, right? So, you know, we invest heavily in research.
I know what percentage of my audience is where and for what portion of each day. So for us, Facebook was a no-brainer, because 95% of our audience has a Facebook. An equally high number of them visit Facebook every day. So Facebook for us was the obvious social platform. Depending on your audience and your format, Facebook might not make sense.
You might be better served on Instagram or Twitch or TikTok or Twitter even. So the first step for broadcasters in jumping into the exciting and fast-paced world of digital and social is, “Where are your people?”
Then step two is understanding that these social platforms are in business for themselves. And they’re not here to help you grow your business necessarily, which means that you can’t just jump on Facebook after having not engaged with the platform much at all and expect to be able to instantly begin succeeding with listener and client events. You have to build up your heft with the algorithm. And that’s all about engagement.
Social is very push/pull. So the more active and engaged you are on the platform, the more the algorithm knows there’s somebody here awake at the wheel and your content gets out there more. That sounds obvious, but it’s been my experience that it isn’t obvious. I work with a lot of businesses, and a lot of clients who want to take advantage of some of the toys and tricks that you can have in that space. And it’s disappointing when they realize that you’re initially invisible to the algorithms.
One mistake that I see a lot of broadcasters making is treating Facebook, we’ll talk about Facebook specifically here, like it’s some sort of free billboard. You can definitely do that, but you’re probably wondering why you have no engagement or very little engagement – it has to be social. You have to connect with those listeners. And that means all kinds of different things. It means putting up a post and then diving in and engaging in the comments. And it means really paying attention to it. It’s a full-time job all by itself. But once you signal to the algorithms that the lights are on and folks are at home, that’s when it starts getting fun and you begin realizing that you have some incredible tools and resources at your disposal, both from a programming and a sales standpoint.
Radio Ink: What caught my eye on all of this and really inspired this conversation was the success you all just had with your LamarBQ livestream, which is a great example of a Facebook Live done well. How did this livestream with Lamar come to be?
Sheri Lynch: At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, it was really clear to us that a big chunk of our audience was suffering. They were isolated and they were lonely and freaked out. And it’s easy now to forget how scary those first few months of the lockdowns were. We genuinely, we were washing our groceries and we didn’t know if or when we were going back to our workplaces. Kids home from school, it was overwhelming. We were watching and listening to the way our audience was experiencing that. So we said we need to do something kind of fun.
We can’t go out in the world. Let’s throw a virtual happy hour this week. We did it on a Friday night. And so we just posted it out there and we talked about it on the show and said, Hey, come have a drink with us Friday night, seven o’clock Eastern. And lots and lots of people came. So we did it again and then we did it again and turned out people enjoyed it and the feedback we got was unbelievable. You know, people were looking forward to it every week. They were putting it up on their smart TVs. We were their substitute social interaction during this very difficult time.
Then we started inviting guests on. We would have a singer-songwriter like Ethan Thompson with Alt Bloom come on and sing some songs and talk to the audience. We’d have actors and comedians join us. When the lockdowns ended and people started kind of getting back out there, our audience didn’t want a happy hour to go away. So we’ve continued it. And we expanded it.
We thought it would be fun to change it up a little bit by having a virtual barbecue, which sounds kind of nuts because who wants to go to a virtual barbecue and not really get cheeseburgers and corn on the cob? But last summer, we did our very first LamarBQ in Lamar, our movie critic’s, backyard. We brought some clients in that had kinds of cooking, cookout, and barbecue-type products, and it was a hit.
So our movie critic has an RV. This year he was set up at a campground. We went out there and figured out the internet and the connectivity and all the technical issues. And we threw a 90-minute virtual barbecue. And it was a blast. we had hundreds and hundreds of people participating live. And then, you know, the video of the event lives on our Facebook. And I can tell you, I checked this afternoon before we talked, we’re up to 36,000 people reached and 38,000 impressions.
Now, I propose it’s possible to do a remote in a parking lot and entertain 36,000 people, but I wouldn’t know where to begin pulling that off outside of Facebook.
Radio Ink: Typically, station socials are driven by talent. Is social media something that managers or sales can just pitch off to the airstaff or the interns? How important is it for leaders to stay on top of the social sphere now?
Sheri Lynch: I think it’s critical because honestly, it is such a tremendous resource. It is such a huge opportunity for radio that the fact that in some places, it’s like, oh, one more thing to do, you know, it’s an afterthought. It is unfortunate because there’s a lot of competition for listener attention.
I could bore you to tears with the data, right? But we know anecdotally, as well as analytically, that we have a lot of competition for their attention. And by engaging with the appropriate social platforms appropriately, in a way that is listener-forward, suddenly now we’re in their lives.
And not just when they’re listening to us in the car, but we’re following them throughout their day and connecting with them at home at night. When you’ve got tens of thousands of people watching the LamarBQ live stream instead of something on Netflix? That tells you something that tells you about the appetite that our listeners have for the content.
Radio Ink: You mentioned about how some people say social is an afterthought – some stations have social media post quotas for their air staff and some are for it, some make the most of it, and some slog through it. Do you find social media content creation to be difficult or is there something these talent can kind of do to ease the burden or make it more fun or is it something that you just build into that skill set over time?
Sheri Lynch: I think that it has to be something that you build into the skill set. I think that we no longer have the luxury of being siloed.
Yeah, I’m a radio personality, but I’m also a digital creator and social media influencer. That’s just the way that the world is. We can all agree that it’s a hassle or that it’s an opportunity. We can’t deny the way the world is. When you look at the data of where listeners are and how they flow through these different mediums and platforms throughout their day, you realize that you’re missing a lot. You’re leaving a lot on the table by not participating in this new technology and these new opportunities.
I’m not a fan of post quotas, even though in the same breath, I will tell you that as a radio station with a Facebook account, you better be posting, especially during business hours, all day every day, over and over again, if you want the algorithm to pop you into the newsfeed. So there is a certain number and kind and quality and shape of posting that you have to do in order to play the game with the algorithms. But, when we put post quotas on talent, we end up with a lot of crap posts that don’t really drive engagement.
Radio Ink: Speaking of crap posts, what’s a big mistake you see often on station social pages?
Sheri Lynch: One of the mistakes that I think I see radio stations making is thinking that all of their social content has to be about the radio station. If you think about who your listeners are, what their lifestyles are, you know, not just demographics, but psychographics. That helps you create content that’s meaningful and relevant to your audience. Every post doesn’t have to be about how you’re the station that plays 10 in a row with no talk.
If you’re no longer thinking about women, 18 to 34, who live in a suburban environment and drive minivans, the minute you get yourself out of those tight silos, suddenly, there’s a lot to talk about with your listeners and your audience. There’s a lot to share. And you want to develop that content in a way that, again, is social.
Because we’ve been doing this with our audience for so long, we know when someone’s sick and in the hospital, and we’ll send flowers. We’re really caught up in people’s lives. I think that’s appropriate because we have asked them for many years to be caught up in ours. It’s only fair that we would be as interested in them as we want them to be interested in us.
Radio Ink: So how do you handle social media posts? How large is your team?
Sheri Lynch: We have a full-time social media and digital director. It’s all hands on deck for social and content and engagement. It does take everyone. You need to have a strategy that everybody understands. You need to have an appreciation for what it means to be social with your listeners, and with your community. And everybody needs to give a damn. Everybody needs to give a damn about it for it to be effective.
Now that said because I know that I just painted a picture of something that’s a pretty big lift. I’m asking everybody to be involved. I’m asking everybody to be passionate. I’m asking you to invest the time and care and thought and strategy into building up your platform so that you’re not invisible to the algorithms. And that’s a job, man. That’s a chore. And I get that. So now let me tell you why you should do all that. because it is such an incredible opportunity to connect with your listeners and with your advertising partners. It’s such an incredible opportunity.
Radio Ink: What percentage split on the Bob and Sheri Facebook is show promotion and original content?
Sheri Lynch: If we have a contest, that’s definitely up there. If we’re doing a happy hour that week or that night, it’s up there. But the bulk of what is on our Facebook is content aimed at entertaining and engaging. It’s not just, you know, a running feed promoting Bob and Sheri. There’s very little of that actually.
We don’t treat it like a promotional engine for the show. We treat it like a treehouse for the people that are Bob and Sheri listeners. We all kind of hang out there together. But you have to build it.
If you hear everything I’m saying and then go sell a Facebook Live engagement to a client and four people show up and then you’re mad at me that it didn’t work, you need to understand that on Facebook, you have to build it before anybody will come. It takes patience and it takes time.
Radio Ink: Who is someone that you admire in the social media sphere? Who is someone that you think is just firing on all cylinders?
Sheri Lynch: Oh man, that’s a trick question because the answer would change based on the platform. Instagram is such an interesting place because it lends itself to the Gwyneth Paltrows of the world – you know, Goop? It lends itself to a lot of engaged celebrity sites. Why? Because we like to get a look at how the stars really live.
TikTok is just an absolute blast. Our audience is slowly beginning to make the migration to TikTok. So I’m not going to shout out a specific account there because we have not yet spent enough time watching where people are going there.
On Facebook, I think some of the most interesting and exciting Facebook accounts are, especially for my audience, are accounts like Grown and Flown. Grown and Flown is a parenting account about how kids grow up so fast and then they’re gone. And they produce content that’s funny, heartwarming, and really super duper engaging for our audience.
A lot of stand-up comedians, like Trae Crowder, do a great job on social media. But his stuff is political, so it tends to be more polarizing.
It’s not about constantly telling the audience, “Do this! Go here! Buy this! Enter to win!” It’s about providing content that is going to be engaging for that audience. So, it’s a tough question to ask me, who I think is doing it right, because the people that are doing it right are doing it in their own way for very specific and sometimes narrow reasons. But the one thing that they all have in common, is they didn’t flip a switch and it was all right there. You have to build it.
