No Time For Facebook

If you want to make your Facebook page interactive when you have little time to post, there’s an easy way to do it. A few country stations make use of RSS feeds from Great American Country (GAC), Albright and O’Malley’s TodaysCountryOnline.com or CMT to go directly to their Facebook pages. This is an easy way to keep your page from looking like a vast wasteland. It’s not ideal, but it helps.

Another way to stay up to speed is using your fan page’s “likes” properly. Your fan page, like your personal page, can “like” other pages too. Another way to appear “in touch” with your target is to use these likes on your profile.

There is a difference in your profile and your “home” page. It’s also similar to your personal page differences, but is more pronounced in the fan page. Your “home” will display the posts others you are following are making. If a post is something other than plain text, like a photo, video, or link, you can share that post with your fans on your profile easily. Click the share link on the post, write a quick line about your impression of the post, and click OK.

Facebook recommends you ask a question with on your shared post to generate feedback from your community. This is a good way to keep an active Facebook page, while your brain is engaged in trying to keep your radio stations on the air.

Don’t make this your only style of posting or your fan numbers will stop growing or even decline.  If you are going to engage, engage.  If there’s just not enough time, stop.  Or let us help you keep your page up to date and local.  If you’d like to know more, respond in the comments.

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Getting Today’s Country Online In Your Facebook Automatically

Here’s a great way to add Today’s Country Online country music news to your Facebook page every day without lifting a finger.

In about 5 minutes your Facebook page will have the best independent source of country music news available.   One of the problems is you are not allowed to take a RSS feed directly to Facebook.  Here’s the method thanks to HyperArts.com.

You’ll use the Social RSS automatically pull in updates from the Today’s Country Online blog  and display them as posts on your Fan Page.

1. Go to the Social RSS page and click “Add to my page” link under the avatar in upper-left of page;
2. In the popup window, select the page to which you want to add the application, the click “OK”;
3. Go to the page to which you added the app, and click “Edit page” under the avatar;
4. Scroll down to the Social RSS app, and click “Edit”
5. In the Social RSS screen, you can enter one or more feeds, and set additional parameters.
6. Here’s the feed information you’ll enter.   http://todayscountryonline.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
    

   Here’s the screen you’ll see when you enter your info

When you finish all your changes, click update at the bottom of the page, and you’re set.

via Adding RSS Feeds to Your Facebook Fan Page – Static FBML and 3rd-Party Apps | HyperArts

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Dip Your Hose In The Stream

At SocialRadioPros, we’ve talked long and loud about the need for using Facebook as a PRIMARY marketing effort for your radio station.  Most radio companies have barely brushed the surface (and that’s giving a brush a bad name).  The reality is most companies are fortunate to have a program director, promotions person, or other staffer who is a Facebook fan and wants to give the station access to the platform.

Most are clueless in what to do.  Most cause TOS violations.  Most don’t know you can’t run a contest completely on Facebook.  (whoops, that’s technically wrong.  You CAN run a contest on Facebook if you have an Ad manager.  That will cost you $30,000 or more, so as far as radio is concerned, that ain’t happening.)

So what do you need to know to get some of this traffic. The internet game is ALL ABOUT THE TRAFFIC.  Side note, would you pay $9.72 for an additional cume of 75,000?  I did using SRP techniques.

First, create interesting content.  The weather for the day is not content.  Neither are the stupid contests you see ALL over Facebook from radio.  Ask yourself a question with your listener hat on.  Do you REALLY believe a listener is going to tune in your station based on a contest that may happen sometime in the next couple of hours?

Give me a break.

Watch your posts for comments.  If you are getting some, you are making relevant and interesting posts.  If you are not, getting comments, SRP can help you by showing you the right way to post and how to track those posts.

If you stopped at “track”, we really need to talk.  We’ll cover the second part of what you need to do in a later post.
Here’s a stat that should get your attention and that of your market manager and sales manager.  Research shows that 51% of people who “fan” a Facebook page are more likely to buy that brand.

OK, so what does that mean to us in radio.

Its about using our influence.  Its about using our talent to refer listeners to advertisers and use the trust we have gained to benefit those who do business with us.  Radio must get in the referral and lead business.

Digital products have gained in popularity not because they are cheap, but because they are trackable.  Radio sells ears.  Digital sells actions.  The sooner we figure out how to charge for actions, the quicker we will get in the digital mainstream.  Banner ads for eyeballs is only a small fraction of the money available in digital.  Actions are where the money is.

If you are interested, SocialRadioPros has a precise step by step method of showing you how to build your Facebook presence so you can get at that money today.  The method and product is free.

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Do Me Right

There is not enough time in the day to listen to all the social media “experts” ply their trade. Even funnier, is watching all the advertising agencies attempt to remake themselves as social experts. Its a matter of necessity. Money is moving to social media from advertising. Agencies are going where the money is and becoming “social media experts.”  Its a matter of survival.

Social media is really pretty simple.

Listen and respond. Engage and talk.

Here’s my view of the “ideal” way to structure social media in radio. This list is from the best practice to least.

1. Dedicated staff person or persons from your staff, who’s entire job is to watch Facebook and Twitter and respond.
2. Outsourced to a social media company who gets radio and its listeners and can act as your voice
3. Have a staff member do it as an “add on” to their job as a talent, production, promotion person or all three
4. Do it yourself among the other jobs you handle
5. Do Nothing

What is your decision? In the next few days, each of the pros and cons of these positions will be covered. You can sit this one out, or you can jump in.

Please share this with your friends. Thanks.

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Re-Tweet Your Way To Followers

Be interesting, compelling, and quick.  The advice we give our talent especially where PPM is concerned.  Sounds like a “Tweet.”  140 meaningful characters that establishes communication, engagement, and activity.  In the “Twitterverse”, there are groups that make a habit of doing nothing but “re-tweeting” others content.

@CountryMusicGW spends most of its time doing exactly that.  Your goal is to have material worth being re-tweeted.

Re-tweeting of your content takes your material and places it in a number of new streams and time lines.  It can increase your influence and bring more people to your web site.  Potential listeners are just a re-tweet away if your stuff is good enough.   Its a great form of marketing, because it comes with a degree of trust from the person doing the re-tweet.

Doesn’t that sound like something a radio station should do?

If you aren’t involved in Twitter,  regularly we can show you how.

The FCC Wants You

Think about this post on Facebook shortly after Christmas

Fine me...please

——————–
See anything wrong? Imagine an FCC inspector or FTC representative looking this over. “Re-act?”

While the rules have changed a lot, this is one that will get you hammered with fines and problems. Its another reason why social media in the wrong hands can be a liability versus a positive force.

Handing your social media efforts over to inexperienced staff to save time can make sense, if they know what they are doing. If they don’t, you can get the disaster in the making.

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Wasting Money on Audience Research

Audience research can be an expensive investment. While the amount of research has been substantially cut based on business conditions, the need for understanding what the audience wants and thinks is exceptionally important.

In a perfect world, stations would work hard at getting close to their consumers. The perfect world of the past included at least one strategic market study per year to determine the “images” of the target station. This study would allow the station to determine its “SWOT” matrix. The entire direction of a stations marketing, programming, and promotional focus would come from this study. You would find music studies or group music tests where listeners would give their impressions of the library titles. These would happen two or three times per year for stations that had a significant library component. Add to that information, weekly “call out” music testing which would closely track the audience’s view of newer songs on a regular basis.

Success would go to the programming team which best understood and implemented the research.

Guess what. It still works that way today.

The frustration at not having the funds to understand the audience is almost universal in media today. There is an underdeveloped source of data that rests at the fingertips. Social media building captures two vital sources of information to help you guide your property. It grabs the “rabid fans”–the ones who will contribute the most to your success. The “P1″ component. It also encourages those same fans to recruit other individuals into your “tribe.”

Social media is NOT and will not work well as advertising. Think of it more like audience research. The difference is the continuing “free” investment in building your audience relationship. The time needed to build the relationship and remain part of the conversation is extensive and important.

Most Interesting Station in the World

There is one key to success in social media for anyone. This key is exactly the same whether you are Ashton Kutcher or a small radio station in the middle of nowhere.

The focus of your social media efforts needs this one item. The problem is the difficulty in determining what that is. Its somewhat like defining what a “hit” is, or making something “go viral.” The definition is dependent on the beholder. What’s good for me, might not be good for you.

Fortunately, the idea is captured completely in the commercial for the beer brand Dos Equis. The “most interesting man in the world” drinks the beer. We don’t know what gave him the title. If you haven’t seen the commercial, I’ve linked to it on the page. This commercial grabs the essence of success in social media. Be interesting.

After watching the commercial, I’m struck the man doesn’t “do” anything to be interesting. He just “is.” The problem with that admonition is most don’t have the time to find interesting, much less post it.

Power of Focus

Pick out the favorite thing you do in your busy schedule. The one on which you would spend the MOST time on if you could. The ONE job function that you enjoy the most. If you had just that to do all day long, how good would you be at it? I’m not talking about glittering generalities like managing people, or going to meetings, or dreaming up promotions at a moments notice. Maybe it would be producing a world class music log. Writing outrageously fun and creative promos might be another. Calling artist management to set up great co-beneficial promotions for you and them could be a third.

How good would you be if that is all you did in the day? Quite a luxury. Radio today has become home of the jack of all trades personnel. Ultimate multitasking. Fifteen minutes a task is about all you have. Software programs are taking over tasks that used to be decided by “ears” only.

The work of building relationships with listeners deserves more time than a line item on the to do list. It deserves having a “meaningful specific” player on your side.

SRP focuses our full attention on Facebook and Twitter interactions for our clients. We monitor, respond, post, and engage listeners on behalf of our stations. We do more than just give you another set of ideas on how to make your station work better. We focus on doing the work too.

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There’s a Forum for THAT??!!

I found out something that blew me away the other day. There is such a thing as a Virtual Assistant Network and Virtual Assistant Forums for people who are VA’s. There are trade newsletters, all manner of websites, all designed to get work done outside the business. It gave me a whole new appreciation for what is going on in the real world.

I’ve always been focused on what’s now called social media. Remember interactive telephone systems? Had one in the early 90′s. These systems were really the start of station VIP clubs that have now moved online. Now we don’t even have to buy the cards. The cards, and the whole system, focused on growing the relationship between the station and its listeners. We do that online now much more efficiently.

In the days of the phone systems and pre-WWW, you had to have a single person at the station focused on handling all the programming that went into the operation of your club. We even had club managers, who’s full job was to create content (we didn’t call it that) and interact with the audience.

Now we have an even GREATER need for that interaction. Especially since competitors in other services have made interaction their focus.

Social media done right can be a people and time consuming effort. With the right help, its a great addition to your marketing plans at the cost of a virtual assistant. A VA who has done radio and knows marketing and social media. I bet there is a forum for that.

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