For several months, Dateline personnel have studied the behavior of the show’s fans on Facebook and other social media sites, allowing them to create a new campaign about the viewers’ experience with the program, not the show’s headlines or personalities. Viewers will be able to use a Facebook app to send video to Dateline producers about their routine around the program. A hashtag #howdoyoudateline has been created to spur conversation on Twitter. They have seen a huge response: over the past 10 months, the show’s audience on Facebook has grown to 173,000 users from 47,000. Followers on Twitter have grown to nearly 30,000 from 14,000.
Radio can learn from what Dateline got right.
Make your online presence about your listeners, and not about you. Would you be friends with someone who talks about himself constantly, doesn’t engage in conversation, or ignores you? No, and neither would your listeners.
Deliver the content your listeners want or expect from your social media accounts. Updates on local concerts, music news, promotions and giveaways, pictures and videos of station events, sneak peeks into what happens behind the scenes. If you aren’t sure what they want, ask them. Use Facebook questions or a Twitter hashtag to start the conversation.
Create and join conversations that are relevant to your brand. Respond to comments on Facebook, and join conversations on Twitter using @replies to create a conversation between your station or show and the listener.
-written for The Randy Lane Company
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