Will radio ever use social media effectively

[Groove1670]

Not to turn this into a political topic, I watched a TV special on how the 2012 presidential campaign used social media to reach the masses. In fact tomorrow Cavouto (sp?) on Fox is doing a segment on how the GOP must embrace Social Media for the 2016 campaign.

With that said, maybe radio needs a outside consultant to integrate social into the current broadcast model, and I'm not talking streaming.

Your thoughts.

 

[secondchoice]

I realize that a lot of operators do not want the payroll expense of a night or overnight "jock", but I contend that with social media being a 24 / 7 event a station is foolish not to have at least some one monitoring Twitter, Facebook and whatever next week's hot social platform is. Of course, with all the debt some operators are carrying, that might not be an option.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I am really too far removed from the battle zone to comment like I am going to, but....

if radio is doing a good job of utilizing Social Media, the "good job" is not visible to me.

Again, not to turn this thread into a political discussion, I learned after the fact, after the election had come and gone, just how well the Social Media awareness and use by the Obama campaign had worked. I live in a solidly RED state and the opposition here (the Democrats... the supporters of Obama) were surprised how well they did in the election.

The letdown has come since the election of 2004. Locals who did not at the time understand the ins-and-the-outs of the social media campaign had worked, and they began to assume something in the state was chaning. Then came the non-presidential election two years later... with little or no social media... and it was a big letdown for them. They have had several years now to lick their wounds... but I don't get the idea they know how to generate their own Social Media campaign here at home.

I think radio sees evidence that Social Media is powerful. My hunch is that radio is just one of many businesses and movements that is lacking in it's creativity and understanding of HOW to harness Social Media.

All I have done is said "amen" to the title of the thread.

So if you are a true genius... and over in your market you wake up some morning and realize that you are a genius, and that your efforts in Social Media are beggining to pay off for your radio station/group BIG TIME... what do you do? Keep it to yourself and milk it as long as you can... or do you share your secrets and your genius with the rest of the industry.... which surely needs some secrets and genius, and watch your competition "whup up on you" by using YOUR own ideas.

 

[TheBigA]

Apparently radio is doing better than other forms of media:

http://www.insideradio.com//Article.asp?id=2684633

 

[landtuna]

The "get off my lawn" crowd seems equally opposed to Facebook et, al.

 

[nd2023]

The best people to help a radio station use social media effectively would be its interns who grew up using Myspace in middle school. Especially if the station has a CHR format.

 

[Roger That]

The best people to help a radio station use social media effectively would be its interns who grew up using Myspace in middle school. Especially if the station has a CHR format.

You would place the betterment of your brand in the hands of an intern?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

You would place the betterment of your brand in the hands of an intern?

I look back with fondness on radio from a slightly earlier era than many who post here.

I think the years I was in the business are the years when control was passed (ripped??? ;D ) from the hands of relatively mature management into much younger hands. And it would seem that through the years, the hands that control have maybe gotten younger and younger?

Today interns in control? And year aftrer next maybe The Junior-hi crowd? What year does the Kindergarten crowd get to take command?

Yes, I'm being silly! The entire business world has gone through an age-profile change. Big corporations have set up programs to identify talent much earlier in their career and groom them to move up. Thus a younger and younger crowd now has buying power which drives the product world and retail world to chase the dollar now in the hands of younger and younger buyers.

So social media.... with warts, freckles, blackheads and all will be learned and harnessed by radio.

Now.... where did I put my Nelson Eddy LP... I know it is here somewhere.

 

[TheBigA]

You would place the betterment of your brand in the hands of an intern?

I got my first radio job when I was a teenager. My pitch to the GM was that I was in the demo that he was trying to reach, as opposed to the DJ he was using, who was much older. It worked. The trick in using social media is knowing that it's supposed to be social, and there's something a bit creepy about being social with an older DJ. So yes, put it in the hands of the intern, who's in the demo, and knows how to use the platform. Heck he might even get a date out of it!

 

[landtuna]

Big corporations have set up programs to identify talent much earlier in their career and groom them to move up.

And yet others, including the Fortune 100 company I spent years with, pigeon hole seniors into type-cast roles and tell the new college graduates "you own your own career" which is corp-speak for "we're not going to invest in you".

They are also prone to morale building statements like this one, issued by a senior IT VP at a major site meeting:

"There are too many gray heads in the audience."
"It's all just yogurt." (I don't know anyone who understood that statement)
"Our employee expectations are very high but our pay scale targets the middle of the industry."

Makes one all warm and fuzzy, no? And they had the gall to ask me why I took the first opportunity to retire ten years before normal retirement. I hope the NCG they got to replace me knew what I knew because otherwise he didn't last long.

 

[Roger That]

You would place the betterment of your brand in the hands of an intern?

I got my first radio job when I was a teenager. My pitch to the GM was that I was in the demo that he was trying to reach, as opposed to the DJ he was using, who was much older. It worked. The trick in using social media is knowing that it's supposed to be social, and there's something a bit creepy about being social with an older DJ. So yes, put it in the hands of the intern, who's in the demo, and knows how to use the platform. Heck he might even get a date out of it!

Thanks for pointing out one of the major problems with Radio's approach to talent. If they're too old and "creepy" to use social media effectively, what makes you think they're appropriate on the air as a jock? As a PD, you're going to tell me that you can relate to 18-34 year olds, but don't know anything about Instagram/Vine/whatever the new thing is? Does not compute. This is the job now. Adapt.

Social media is a major channel of your radio station, as well as the lives of the audience. Would you trust the Promotions Director's job to an intern? Imaging? Production? On-air? The idea that you can effectively relate to that audience, without including all the channels that they live in, is archaic at best, and an easy criticism of Radio as an industry. It also easily answers the original question. Will Radio ever use social media effectively? If dumping it on interns and not making the talent adapt is the strategy, the answer is no.

We coddle talent because they have history at a station, and then immediately lower the expectations of their adaptation to new tech. Really?

I'm not saying that intern-age kids don't have value and can't be talented. Quite the contrary. But as an intern, you have NO investment in the brand. You have NO accountability; you're a free employee whose biggest potential consequence is losing the internship. You're gone in three months even if you are great. Wonder why stations vans are always beat to hell? They're always driven by the revolving door of cheap part-time employees a station has. If something happens to it, they just give the van back to the rest of us, who have to figure out what part of the budget we're going to have to pull from to fix whatever ails it thanks to their youthful negligence.

This, like most of Radio's approach to digital stuff, is WAY behind the times already. Much like everyone's excitement over this Sprint FM-chip-app thing, as though that's going to make a difference. If you were waiting for something like this to come out, your station has already lost the battle.

Approach social media not as an extension of whatever you're doing on the air. Approach it as its own channel, that happens to be associated with the station and its brand. And, if the most qualified person in your building to run that is an unpaid intern, you have the wrong employees.

Just my $0.02.

 

[amfmxm]

I'm not an expert, but I am a voracious reader. And I recall reading something a few months back indicating that marketers have found that while social media is, indeed, popular--that it has not proven to be an effective marketing environment.

Because people are there to socialize.

It's why the Facebook IPO fell flat. Great place to see what Cousin Fred did over the weekend, but not a great place to sell stuff.

My jocks spend most of the day on our FB sites, presumably interacting with our fine listeners. Instead of doing radio. I'm not convinced that this is the best use of their time...

 

[TheBigA]

Thanks for pointing out one of the major problems with Radio's approach to talent. If they're too old and "creepy" to use social media effectively, what makes you think they're appropriate on the air as a jock?

That's another issue, and in my opinion why some younger people aren't listening to OTA. Too many boomers still in CHR. But OTA radio is a different platform than social media. OTA is one-to-many, while social media is more one-to-one. A lot of older on-air talent simply don't understand or are uncomfortable with the professional use of social media.

Social media is a major channel of your radio station, as well as the lives of the audience. Would you trust the Promotions Director's job to an intern? Imaging? Production? On-air?

Obviously he's not operating without supervision or management. The campaign he's carrying out has been set up by a responsible station employee. He's simply doing the work, not establishing policy. Two very different functions.

I'm not an expert, but I am a voracious reader. And I recall reading something a few months back indicating that marketers have found that while social media is, indeed, popular--that it has not proven to be an effective marketing environment.

I agree. The big mistake some companies make is to think they can insert commercial messages into a station Facebook or Twitter page. Users see it as Spam. Now Twitter is inserting their own ads into chains, and I can't imagine they're having much impact.

My jocks spend most of the day on our FB sites, presumably interacting with our fine listeners. Instead of doing radio. I'm not convinced that this is the best use of their time...

I don't know if they're doing it "instead of doing radio." Most people can do both. What I've found is radio stations have rules about how much interaction their talent can do on the air, so they carry it over to social media. It's not like they're waiting for a song to end so they can start up the next turntable. Most of their job has been automated.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I'm sitting here laughing this morning because of this conversation.... but if I don't get out of the room and turn off the computer pretty soon, I may end up crying! ;D The old Yogi Berra quote is appropriate for the moment: "This is deja vu' all over again."

I was present and accounted for when radio ran head-on into a transformation that back then was as earth-shaking as the transformation into the Social Media world is today. I was working in small town radio when Rock-and-Roll hit. I was working for people well trained and steeped in the age of network radio and Big Bands and having your check-off list for "FCC Brownie Points" with something we called community service. And then came Elvis and "Race Music" as it was called then, followed by the Beatles, and soon Country Music had a mid-life crisis trying to figure out if they wanted to fiddle or rock.

I was in small SOUTHERN towns where social standards were often set by the "We don't dance!!!" Baptists. So I grew up in a radio business that faced the question: Do we go D.J., do we Rock, Do we chase a younger and younger audience? And as a low-level, entry-level player... I had very little life-experience and decision-making ability to decide which image of the "multiple personality industry" to chase after.

And I sit here trying to picture... if I were once again that age... but in this era... would I understand what to do with "Social Media" and radio? Would I know what faction in this splintered broadcast industry to hitch my wagon to?

Even though I hardly ever engage in 'adult beverages'.... if I EVER get up your way AMFMXM... we're gonna have a beer or two together and I'm sure between the two of us we could solve all the problems in the world.... and make radio FUN! Well... on second thought, maybe we could lower the bar and see if there are any border wars between Illinois and Indiana we could settle. :

 

[TheBigA]

And then came Elvis and "Race Music" as it was called then, followed by the Beatles, and soon Country Music had a mid-life crisis trying to figure out if they wanted to fiddle or rock.

Exactly. I was doing some archival work at one time, involving me listening to radio newscasts from 1964 and the Beatles invasion. What music did they play to represent The Beatles? Elvis. It was all the same to them.

 

[PirateJohnny]

In the past, has "radio" ever wished for something like social media? Did "radio" need instant contact with listeners and instant gratification from listeners when their comment to the DJ went out to the masses?

What does "radio" need/want from social media? Is the OTA listener left out if they are not participating with the DJ and other listeners on social media? Is a social media participant left out if they are not listening OTA?

Has anyone ever heard of Second Life? It's a "free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat", something like World Of Warcraft. Second Life is Social Media on steroids. You have an avatar that you control "in world" and you interact with text chat or voice with the other "players". There is no "game" to play, it's just social interaction. One major activity is visiting clubs and listening to DJs, who stream music into the clubs. I Djed in Second Life for a while. One night a visitor to the club admitted in the text chat that she was not there listening to the music, only to chat with friends.

So, with that anecdote in mind, what does 'radio" do with social media participants who are not OTA participants? How do you sell them to advertisers?

 

[amfmxm]

PJ, I'm not sure you can--at least right now--except in that ethereal realm of packaging in which they get a "bag of stuff" (radio spots, streaming spots, a webpage ad and mention in the morning guy's blog--all for the low, low price of $995 a month).

The biggest issue facing most radio sellers is that radio is generally easier to sell. And if that salesperson has 4 radio stations (with 12 avails per hour, 168 hours each week... uh, 8064 avails per week!) and more inventory than they can possibly get rid of--but still easier to sell than digital advertising of whatever sort.

So they never get around to it...

And GRC, the "Wabash Wars" would be fun. I was just out there a few weeks ago, straddling the Illinois-Indiana border, visiting relatives. I'm happy to report that it is still very flat--on both sides of the state line!

 

[Roger That]

So, with that anecdote in mind, what does 'radio" do with social media participants who are not OTA participants? How do you sell them to advertisers?

It's a different audience. That's the point. There is a lot of crossover, but it won't be everyone.

And if you're worried about making money off of them, you're doing it wrong. Content first.

 

[TheBigA]

And if you're worried about making money off of them, you're doing it wrong. Content first.

I agree. The only thing it does is allow you to engage with your listeners. In the past, stations did it at remotes or events. Now, DJs don't attend those kinds of things. Gen Xers don't use the phone for talking, but texting. It's mainly non-verbal communication. Radio is a verbal medium, so you diversify your platforms. In my world, communication is communication, verbal or not. So social media is what DJs do it build their fan base and enlarge their relationship with their audience. But it's not a sales tool. If social media works, it keeps the listeners tuned in, and those numbers can be sold.