Making Radio Stronger In A Disaster
Loyd Ford
Loyd Ford on Social Media
Loyd Ford has been in radio all his life, beginning in High School in Southern California. His father taught him to focus on strategy when he was a boy. In his early 20s Ford began programming radio stations. He says, "It was a good match for the use of strategy. Loyd has spent time programming KRMD in Shreveport, WSSL and WMYI in Greenville, WKKT in Charlotte and WBEE in Rochester, NY. Ford's latest strategy is his social networking for radio Facebook page. We spoke to him about his vision for helping radio stations succeed with social media.
Using Social If You Were Local Radio!
Radio, in some corners of our industry, seems to be confused about social media. However, radio is the original modern social media and you can prove this to yourself in only a few seconds. If you think it, radio has always connected local groups and brought communities together by helping local listeners and local advertisers. We haven’t just broadcast to local communities.
Can Off-Air Assets Lead To More Revenue?
If you hear another person say we are living in transformational times, you will likely throw up. It’s true. radio sees consumers gaining power all around them and many in our industry are trying to figure out how to reshape with the changing times. This power-shift includes everything from what has happened in the music business for record labels to what is taking place now in automotive (if you are not up on consumer demand changes in automotive, I suggest you visit your local Ford dealership and ask about apps in cars).
Do You Really Believe In Social Media?
How much belief is there in social media in your building? Do you believe it is real or do you believe it is a big waste of time? Let’s find out. 1. Do your radio brands have a defined strategy for social media that gives them content goals to hit each day? Is the morning show responsible for blogging and sharing lifestyle pictures and videos along with other rich content that is designed to bring local listeners back to your website and on-air?
Major News Events And Social Media
When something as big as the Boston Marathon bombing takes place, local radio hopefully responds quickly. What about local radio’s social media? Here are five things you should consider when tapping into social media strategy for handling important breaking news.
Radio's 5 Social Media Missteps
Every once in a while I like to focus on what I call contemporary missteps in social media as it relates to radio stations and content “misunderstandings. ” Maybe you never do any of these, but chances are you should read this anyway just to refocus your efforts. So, here are five specific missteps many radio stations make with their social media content.
Gaining Attention In Social Media
Radio stations will always want to figure out how to be more effective in social media. However, you can’t be effective until you gain real access to the attention of the listeners in your market that you most want to attract, engage, and bring back to your brands. Here are four ways to drill down your content so that you focus on really gaining attention of the listeners you most want to engage with your content on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.
Charity Engagement And Social Media
Every company is a media company. Gone are the days when you are competing in just one form or the days when you are only competing with other radio companies and brands. You may not think of it this way, but you are competing with a wider variety of businesses trying to get your listeners’ attention. As you can reasonably expect, listeners regularly pull back to respect only the opinion of those they are close to or those that gain their trust over time.
Bring Listeners Back To Your Brand
It’s funny when you think about social media and radio. Radio has always been a social media. Highly skilled radio personalities of the past were good at working crowds with real engagement, remembering names (validating listeners) and encouraging listeners to participate in local charities and join their radio station in doing good things in the local community and for causes like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
What Is Your Social Media Plan?
Social media sites are now used by more than 65 percent of adults over the age of 18 in the U.S. Some say those numbers are low. To establish that adult acceptance and widespread use of social media is not new, we are going to quote research from a couple of years back.
Facebook Redesign & Your Station
For anyone who does not know, rich visuals are a huge key to being successful in attracting and giving energy to the most important participators in social media, mobile, or the Web. Uh, if you don’t know how important mobile is, the Facebook news feed redesign in 2013 should highlight that for you and you should be paying attention.
Boost Station (Brand) Advocate Cheerleading
While broadcasters constantly try to find ways to boost listeners who have a diary or a meter (how to game the system), seeking to please highly passionate listeners and those who are engaged and active on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter could have an even more significant impact (because they could influence diary holders and meter carriers).
Social Media Value For Local Radio
While local radio (and national radio companies) seeks constant ways to get listeners to click, focus, and participate with them, actual radio listeners seek validation, value, and fulfillment of their needs with content that is relevant to them. This is true in social media even more than it is true of their identification with your local radio brand or personalities.
7 Big Social Media Missteps
What are the big missteps radio folks make when they use social media? You know it is happening out there. It’s not just a misstep here and a misstep there. We see tons of radio stations only promoting likes or their own contests. Where are the truly local radio stations involved in what their listeners are passionate about and providing great content for the listeners they most want to attract?
Is Your Social Media A Waste Of Time?
Social media is a complete waste of time if you are not prepared to have a strategic plan (do you have one?) and turn your attention toward the audience you most want to attract and benefit. Did you see that second thing? “And benefit.”
8 Ways To Go Viral With Your Social Media
How do you go viral in your market, or in general, with social media? Let’s take a look at how to set conditions to have your content spread like wildfire across the important groups of cheerleaders or passionate listeners and social media participators who will and can blow you up!
Hiring The Right Social Media Person
If you’ve ever thought about putting more investment in your social media, this may be the thing for you. It may be time for you to hire a social media person. However, you should put a lot of thought into the person you hire. Here are six qualities that person should have.
3 Social Platforms To Boost Results
You are strapped for time. It’s difficult for your small staff to do everything. Budgets have been cut (again). The boss and the company still expect great ideas, creativity, and growth. You want to find ways to grow your ratings, grow your engagement, but you may not be sure you can be effective using social media along with your ratings marketing.
Make 2013 The Year Of Local Social
2013 is already off to a roaring start. If you are responsible for social media at your radio station, chances are good you may have confusing information about how to get the most out of what you are doing, but you can pick it up, improve what you are doing (even if you are already excellent) and push yourself to produce actual results for your brand in 2013 by marrying your social media to the mission of your radio station on a local basis.
Reduce Time Working Social Media
I hear it all the time: How can I take shortcuts? I work so much and wear so many hats. Tell me the easy way out. Before you read further, I must say that the easy way out or shortcuts just for the sake of shortcuts rarely add up to more success. The best in any business work smarter, but they don’t take shortcuts just to perform less work.
Social Media New Year’s Resolutions
Oh, no. It’s that time of year. New Year’s resolutions. Who makes these anymore? Oh, you do? Okay. Here are a few New Year’s resolutions for radio with regard to social media: 1. Social media is not going to be as important as the fundamentals on my radio station that produce ratings, revenue, public service, and the satisfaction of knowing I contribute to my industry and local market with the unique power of a local broadcaster.
4 New Local Social Media Trends For 2013
(By Loyd Ford) If you know it or if you don’t, we have entered the era where the consumer, at almost all levels, is participating in the process of gaining access to a more pure form of control. And it’s coming to radio. This process has made its way through a variety of industries, crushing business models and shape-shifting the way businesses engage consumers and how consumers choose the brands they spend time and money with today.
Social Media Strategy Reveal For 2013
Thanksgiving weekend hopefully allows you to “pull the plug” after working so hard to prepare your brands for the long holiday weekend. Some time with family and friends is exactly what most broadcast professionals need after slugging it through tough battles for ratings and deep challenges on the employee level in this business, among other things. However, if you are fortunate, this time of year also allows you to reflect on your success and think about additional ways you can improve in 2013 and grow your business.
Changing With The Facebook Times
We’ve had a good amount of time now to get used to the idea that there are these social media platforms (led by Facebook) that allow you access to opportunity (if you are willing to give up some of your 20th Century ways) to grab onto new ideas that will help your radio station in the seemingly new “If it's free, it’s for me” environments like Facebook.
How to Take Control
You always see advice about how you can do more with social media. How about some advice on control? Can control help you have more effective social media that makes you seem more human? Can you get more from your efforts simply by maintaining control? Let’s check out four ways to have more control and why they are effective for radio.
Set Your Social (Media) Right
You might be surprised when you find out that the social media you thought was being done well for your team isn’t. If you don’t put care into understanding your audience and how they use social media, you will likely fail.
Do You Know What Your People Tweet?
In the 1950s, stations all across America allowed DJs to come in with their own records and play what they wanted. It was a free-for-all. No operator would do that today. Now, stations allow personalities, and even part-timers, to tweet and post on Facebook whatever they want without regard to having a plan for social media. What should you include in your social media content today?
5 Ways To Turn Around Your Social Media
If you find that your “social media isn’t working,” you must take a serious look at how you are executing social media. Do you have a plan or are you following the herd? Are you engaged? Do you understand how social media is like building a relationship or are you using it only for advertising? If your social media is not working and you want to turn it around, start by asking what you might be doing wrong?
6 Ways Listeners Share You
Broadcasters usually want to engage listeners who will spread their content to others and really become cheerleaders for their brands. That’s fine, but it should not be your entire focus on social media. You should also be engaged in “listening” yourself.
4 Must-Knows Of Social Media & Radio
If you feel your social media is not working, the questions all become about what strategy you're using and how you define success in social media for your station. Let’s take a look at four things everyone needs to know about social media and radio.
How To Go Viral On FB. Should You?
We could have called this “How To Win Friends & Influence People,” but I will spare you that. What are the keys for radio content “going viral” on Facebook? 1. Content, content, content. Believe me, I know it seems the experts are saying this until they are blue in the face, but you CANNOT FAKE this step.
Tips On Contesting Using Social Media
In today’s busy broadcast world, people are often looking for the easy way out. A lot of radio’s efforts in social media fall flat because they try to use it for advertising or exclusively for contesting. You must ask yourself, “Where is the value in our social media for the listener or the “social media actives"? This week we look at contesting and give a few guidelines for you to think about when it comes to social media and contesting for radio.
6 Important Don’ts Of Social Media For Radio
With so much focus on what you should be doing in social media, every once in a while it is good to get a check-up so you know you are not actually doing things you shouldn’t. 1. Be social -- and by that I mean don’t over-market the radio station on social media. You know the kind of personality or station I mean: Tons of me, me, me, me and very little focus on the listener.
Welcome Listeners To Your Brand
Many people in our business talk about what to post on social media. There is a big focus on being "on" Facebook and Twitter (among other platforms). However, I have long stated that your focus in social media should be on providing a variety of top flight content that listeners want in those environments -- and it must be content they will spread.
Bank On Social Media Revenue
What makes social media so special? Why should you spend time and resources on it? Shouldn't the limited staff you have be involved only in advertising-related business on-air or making appearances on behalf of your brands? How can you use social media to strengthen your hold on advertisers?
Get Your Fall Social Media Moving Now
When it comes to social media, you are never surprised that "great content is king." The trouble is being creative and coming up with ideas that can really turn the page for listeners and get them engaged in your product. As fall approaches, you have big family events that you can take advantage of with creative flair. Consider the return of school and the return of football.
4 Reasons Radio Struggles With Social
If your station (or perhaps a station in your group) struggles with social media, perhaps there are myths behind the struggle that could be keeping social media from being effective for your brand. Let's take a look at myths that might be holding you back.
7 Holiday Streaming Tips
You can’t get much out of the holidays and social media, right? Wrong. You can use creativity to give a powerful impact to listener holidays and bond them to your brand.
Don't Forget Video!
Radio could use video much more effectively and often. It does not require a lot of time or effort in 2012 to make good video that listeners will be interested in and post it to social media sites so listeners are encouraged to participate in your brand.
Fix Your Broken Social Media
Many people in radio and other industries today believe it is important to have a social media arm. Some see social media as advertising; it isn't. Some see cheerleaders pumping up a brand and think they can do that in your radio market for your station; you can.
How a Personality Should Use Social Media
(by Loyd Ford) There are many hats to wear as a radio personality these days. More stations are expecting personalities to have a meaningful participation in social media. Unfortunately, many companies are simply putting content on Facebook or Twitter without a plan or even an idea about how they can contribute something truly meaningful.
4 Ways To Divide Your Time In Social
There are a lot of things you can do with social media, but stations have specific needs. As programmers or personalities, we should be seeking access to ears and eyes for our products both online and on-air, and also to participate in the lives of the most active listeners.
Social Media School For Radio
Every single person in the broadcast business should be going to social media school. Social media is more than a few buzz words. It is a way for radio to expand its engagement with listeners in their chosen social media platforms, lead them back to our brands for usage, and stay strongly connected to the communities inside our own local communities that matter for ratings and revenue expansion.
Getting Listeners to Like Your FB Page
While I'm not a big fan of trying to see how many "likes" you can get on your radio station Facebook page, (I'm more focused on having radio use Facebook to drive relationship, engagement, and activity back to our actual brands), clients ask this question all the time: How can I get more "likes"? They also want to know how to make social media easy, quick, and profitable.
Grow Trust And Usage With Social Media
The simple rules of the road are mostly about expectation. When you build a radio station, you know that trust and expectation are two essential elements that cannot be faked. The same is true for social media and personal contact opportunities. Here's how you grow listener trust and usage over time using social media?
8 Steps To Higher Listener Participation And More Money
Great content is the key to success in our business. Unfortunately, in many markets, the business of radio has been reduced to paint-by-numbers corporate measures to extract dollars from the local market with little choice, chance, or opportunity for elevating content.
Top 10 Musts For Your Loyal Listener E-mails
If you’ve been in programming, promotions, or associated with guiding a radio station over the last decade, you may be up to speed with your listener e-mail – or it may be time to freshen your approach. We’ve all seen stations send ads sold and forced down our throat from the sales department. That is a disservice to them, to your station, and to the listeners.
Promote Your Station, Not Just Facebook
A lot of radio stations think they are participating in engagement on Facebook. However, this is just like anything that becomes newly accepted by the masses. There are people who think they are using it for their own brands and those people who are just doing a lot of empty promotion. How can you make sure you are using Facebook instead of Facebook using you?
Become A Social Media Explorer
Exploring successful social media ideas can bring more power to your own efforts. After all, you are unlikely to have the best ideas 100% of the time. Looking around as a “listener” and not as a broadcast pro can offer you a new view of how to become more tuned in to listeners’ worlds. As always, you will hear me say that your goals for social media in all forms is to be a relevant part of listeners’ social media space, engage listeners in their own passions, drive audience toward your on-air brand.
Changing Social Media For Radio
Right now over 850,000,000 people are use Facebook. Targeting in U.S. markets for active users of Facebook is exploding. The temptation is always there to go big, be big and chase Facebook and other social media platforms for the purpose of participating alone. They tell you how to do it. Everyone pretty much does the same thing. At the same time, radio shouldn’t just follow something like Facebook.
Success on Facebook is Not About "Likes"
Every day PD's and GM's brag about the number of fans they have on Facebook and how they want to increase this measurement. However, that only underscores how much work radio has to do when shifting from radio to social media. Our industry is often confused about how to use social media to get real results. The truth is only a small percentage of “fans” on a Facebook page actually engage with the brands they “Like.” Here are 3 reasons why you should never answer a question about the success of your social media with how many listeners “Like” your Facebook page.
6 Keys To Building Listener Relationships
There's a lot of hype involved with social media, and there are a lot of radio pros that have not yet awakened to the idea that systemic shift can “get you” if you don’t move now to protect your best relationships. If you are not using social media to expand contact, encourage loyalty with real value-based content and grow listening occasions for your brands, you are setting up future critical failure of your brand. Here are 6 Key Ingredients To Build Listener Relationships thru Social Media:
5 Ways To Avoid Social Media Time Suck
If you are in the radio business in 2012, you have less time and are doing more work than ever. Still, you feel responsible to get every bit of value you can from the tools at your disposal. So, I thought we could look at maximizing the value of your social media by being efficient and using your time wisely.
Make Social Media Easier…For Your Listeners!
Radio people are usually always thinking “How can we spend less time doing it but be more effective with social media for radio?” Today we're going to talk about how to make it easier for your LISTENERS to engage your brand and get more from your social media. Here are six ways to make things easier for your listeners.
4 Ways To Increase Social Media Effectiveness
Is your social media stuck in the early days or have you broken free to establish active participation with listeners based upon what excites them about your radio station, what they care about and what you stand for in 2012? Here are four ways to increase your 2012 effectiveness in social media.
7 Social Media/ Radio Resolutions
(Loyd Ford) If you make New Year’s Resolutions, here are a few good potential social media New Year’s Resolutions for your radio station as you look ahead to 2012.
4 Ways To Make Your Social Media Pop!
(by Loyd Ford) As social media becomes more prominent and relevant, it's clear those radio stations (and shows) with better plans will get better esults. Everyone knows content is critical, but often content managers are missing important elements that can add to their actual success. Here are four elements that bring your listeners into your orbit in social media.
7 Tools For Managing Social Media
If only you had more time, right? Social media can be time consuming. As you begin to look at your plans for 2012, consider these seven potential tools for getting more out of your social media with less time. Screenr.com gives you opportunity to record “screencast.” You can put your screencast on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and it will even pop on your listeners’ iPhone. And it’s free.
Your Winningy Strategy For 2012
(by Loyd Ford) A lot more people than you might think are still wondering what their social media strategy should be. What should you include in your social media strategy for 2012? You program your radio station to be special, so your social media should be special, too. If you are a radio personality reading this, you should be thinking about your personal brand value and how to enhance that through personal relationship in social media. Here are some things that you “must include.”
A Winning Social Media Roadmap
Many of our bosses look at Facebook and Twitter as additional advertising vehicles. They are not. Too many executives in radio still focus on how many followers, likes or content readers they have as a judgment for how well they are doing. That’s not right either. While having a lot of followers looks good, it is really investing in a dead or disoriented measurement. Here's how you can set specific goals to gain real benefits for your radio station in social media?
5 Ways To Making Social Media Personal
(by Loyd Ford) Radio’s social media efforts are focused largely on advertising to listeners. Stations assign a person to deliver content designed to get people to “like” your brand. That's largely considered a “win.” However, the mission in social media should really be more focused on connecting with emotion to personalize those connections with “actives” or enthusiasts who always provide the 80 in the standard 80/20 rule.
9 Ways To Make Your Facebook Content Explode
(by Loyd Ford) You see all the sharing going on in social media. Perhaps you've seen the video of the fish in the blender on YouTube or a specific set of celebrity pictures on Facebook sared many, many times. Maybe you've seen a few radio personalities who have a fair amount of sharing going on among Facebook “participators.” But how do YOU make your content explode among listeners on Facebook?
9 Ways To Make Simple Listener Email
(by Loyd Ford) Radio stations today focus on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to engage listeners, but often those same stations bypass important email opportunities with their loyal listener database. They simply throw those opportunities away with little effort and less real engagement. That means stations are leaving a powerful opportunity to reach and engage the most important listeners for their station. Here are nine ways to fix all that.
5 Ways To Create Excitement Through Facebook.
(by Loyd Ford) A lot of radio stations have Facebook pages. Not many radio stations use Facebook as a stage for listener engagement. Yet this opportunity exists every day in your world and your listeners’ world. Here are 5 specifics to make certain you are building an engaging stage.
Make Your Website Social. Here's How
(by Loyd Ford) Social media is having a more meaningful impact for those who are truly and consistently working content for listener engagement and benefit. However, many radio stations don’t put a lot of real effort into making sure their website is “today friendly.” How important is your website?
YouTube Is For Your Radio Station
(by Loyd Ford) So, you have fewer employees in a radio station than in any time of recent (or extended memory). You have fewer personalities in the building. You have a smaller group of people working on keeping your images in front of active listeners in your market, right? If only you had some tools that could help you spread your effort so you could do more with less.
Here's What Your Listeners Want From Social Media
(by Loyd Ford) We live in a world today that is dominated on a person level by companies that use technology to “handle” their customers. Average consumers can feel that companies want their money and not the work of dealing with them. Imagine it: customer avoidance through technology. This causes the general population extreme frustration, but it is generally accepted as the “new normal.”
5 Ways To Use Social Media To Your Advantage
What value do you place in learning new things and how do you see your job or role growing in this business over the next three to five years? We are standing at a value crossroads in this business today and no matter who you are you need to develop new abilities and be able to showcase those abilities to those making critical employment and business value decisions. How you see social media and how you effectively put that to work for you can play one critical role in adjusting your sails for continued success. However, you must be able to frame the issue of social media as a true value for your employer.
5 Ways To Get Meaningful Results From Social
(by Loyd Ford) There’s a lot of talk about social media. It’s inside radio stations and in the trades. “We’re on Facebook.” “We use Twitter.” "Foursquare, Google+ so forth and so on. Here’s the big question: Can you really get meaningful results for your radio station brands using social media? The answer is: YES!
5 Ways Your Station Should Be Using Video
(by Loyd Ford) Even if you’ve been under a rock or two for the last couple of years, you know that a very large and mainstream audience in America is frequently using social media. You’ve even likely seen the reports that one of the largest segments of growth on Facebook is 35 – 54. You might even think you are doing great if your radio station has a Facebook page and your station uses Twitter, but you are missing a lot of success and audience interaction if your radio station is not using video to get attention and share content (and have your content shared with others again and again).
5 Secrets To Developing a Winning Facebook Plan
(by Loyd Ford) Radio companies are so lucky. They have a business that focuses on people. People depend on connection to personalities on our best brands to help them get through their day, share music or celebrity news or changing weather and entertain them while they work. If you look at the things people depend on us for in “companionship” at the radio station, doesn’t that look like some of the same things listeners do on their Facebook pages? People don’t generally connect to companies (see the Geico Gecko). Adults (and children) connect and identify with personalities.
How to Use Social Media To Get Listeners Engaged
(by Loyd Ford) If you’ve read any of my thoughts on social media, you know I am a big believer in using personalities from radio to connect with individuals in social media and always working to bring them back to the station. But how do you make sure your social media connects with the right people who will matter to your brand and how to you get them to be more loyal to your station?
Your Social Media Value Is In Content
(by Loyd Ford) If you are in radio today, especially as a personality or programmer, your value in social media is in your content. It’s the same as your value on-air. In fact, in today’s changing environment, your content will be the only thing that keeps you employed and protects your employer from internet radio and other distractions that can interrupt revenue. Don’t kid yourself.
Stop Gaming Your Listeners.
(by Loyd Ford) Most PD's say they are on Facebook and Twitter. Some tell you how many “fans” or “likes” they have. That's not engagement. It’s a listener who did something once. Stations can use social media to compel action from important influential listeners. Unfortunately, looking at most Facebook groups and pages, you can see many in our industry are trying to “game” listeners with technology instead of building value relationships with actionable payoff.
Developing An Actual Plan For Social Media
By now, you are likely on Twitter and Facebook, but do you have specific goals you want to achieve within your social media platforms? Most radio stations are not working an actual plan because they don’t have one. Some radio stations and whole companies don’t think about applying strategy and goals to their work in social media because they don’t truly value it. These are the kinds of competitors you want to have in any market.
Radio Lessons From The Facebook Changes
(by Loyd Ford) Radio companies – from the mom and pop to the corporate – should become more serious about the human aspects of social media. And radio has to get serious about using products like Facebook for the purpose of connecting with people in their chosen social environment and encouraging them back to the radio dial.
Social Media Database Questions To Ask Yourself
(by Loyd Ford) Since I get asked about database and social media a lot, I thought I would lay out some simple questions to make it easy for anyone to use self-assessment to see how they are doing with these amazing tools right now. These two items have a lot more in common if you do a good job of using both to draw important listeners closer to your brand.
