Stephanie Winans

Business & Marketing Strategy Consulting

on-air content

Why Morning Shows Deserve Their Own Facebook Page

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Three clients have approached me in the last few months, all worried because the station they work for is threatening to cancel their Morning Show Facebook page. Not because their behavior on Facebook is out of line with the station brand, or because it is distracting them from the on-air product, but because they view it as a threat to the growth of the station’s Facebook presence.

While I understand the need to streamline the on-air message regarding social media, I believe morning shows deserve their ownMorning Shows-Facebook social media accounts. Here are five reasons why:

1. A radio station is only as strong as its shows, its music, and its promotions. A show that is using social media to engage P1s and attract new listeners is serving more than itself- but the station as a whole.

2. A smart radio station Facebook or Twitter account represents all aspects of the station brand. This includes new music, artist news, promotions and contests, and shows. Because there are only so many posts that should be made in one day, the morning show has limited opportunity to promote their show and its content on the station page (typically within the time the show airs).

Having their own Facebook and Twitter presence allows them to be a source of entertainment for listeners 24/7, creating brand loyalty and increasing tune-ins.

3. Fans “like” and “follow” radio stations for different reasons than they do shows or air talent. They expect the station to keep them updated with concerts, music news, contests and promotions. They like or follow a show or air talent accounts to find out more about what they’ve heard on the show, and to personally connect with the specific jock they love. Following a person and a brand are different, and they both have a place in social media.

4. Morning show talent almost always ensure their online presence is in line with the on-air brand. If they are growing a fan base online, it’s because they care about their brand and the show’s success. They want to give listeners what they expect, and would not post any content that doesn’t reflect the show’s branding.

It’s unlikely they will behave badly… Facebook isn’t Vegas, so they know what happens there will always make it back to Management.

5. Facebook is a great place to test on-air topics. Many shows use Facebook as a gauge by posting phone topics the night before. Often a topic they thought would be huge has “no legs,” evident by the lack of engagement on Facebook. And sometimes a small topic turns into a huge segment, as the show sees different angles in Facebook comments. Using Facebook to “test topics” makes the on-air product stronger, as it weeds out the topics that don’t resonate with listeners.

And why not let the show keep their page?

If you’re worried that the show’s on-air promotion of their Facebook page is hurting the growth of the station page, set parameters.

If your station Facebook page lacks morning show presence because they only post on their own, set guidelines for when they must post on the station page.

Just don’t cancel their account.

This is a controversial topic by nature. I welcome your opinions, as they may help guide compromise for Management and Morning Show talent.

 

Photo credit: Modified from a photo from clotho98 on Flickr via Creative Commons

11 Digital Predictions for the Radio Industry

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Based on the digital landscape in radio today, here are 11 predictions for radio’s future in digital:

1. The fusion of on-air content and online platforms will be seamless.
As radio stations develop strong digital strategies for their on-air talent, the content and engagement of online platforms will be naturally integrated into the on-air show. As the request lines ring less and less, jocks will use texting, social media and website commenting platforms to add more listener interaction to their shows.

2. Air talent social media platforms will be owned by the radio companies who employ them.
Many of the major radio corporations are already enforcing company social media guidelines upon air talent for their individual and show accounts. While some may retain control based on a “grandfathered in” negotiation, many will lose control as they are required to follow specific rules and even give administrative access to corporate staff.

3. Air talent will be held accountable for their online results.
Website traffic and social media success will no longer be measured out of curiosity or used for bonuses only. Air talent will be required to meet quarterly goals set by management, for both the station website and their show’s digital platforms.

4. Stations will budget for social media third party apps.
To achieve results with social media, radio will invest in applications for scheduling, contesting, and analytics.

5. Podcasting will no longer be the redheaded stepchild of radio.
Radio will follow the model of television (think DVR, on-demand), super-serving the core listeners with on-demand listening. Instead of viewing podcasts as a threat to both radio’s ratings and budget, managers will innovate and restructure podcasts to create ROI, regardless of the minimal ratings return.

6. All stations will have mobile apps and websites.
As mobile website usage continues to rise, even the smallest companies will focus on the mobile optimization of their station websites, and will invest in reliable mobile listening apps.

7. Stations will own advanced video equipment.
As the pressure to incorporate video into digital strategies builds, stations will invest in video equipment for use in-studio, at promotional events, concerts, and client remotes.

8. Radio will invest in social gaming for branding and promotions.
As listeners become more savvy to standard online advertisements, digital strategists and sales managers will invest more money for better results, with creative branding campaigns and promotions using social gaming.

9. Radio sales executives will sell the entire brand, rather than just terrestrial radio.
As advertisers seek more creative, multi-platform ideas, radio’s sales superstars will view their station brand from a big picture perspective, creating unique solutions for clients that involve marketing from a variety of platforms.

10. The radio industry will become an early adopter to digital innovations.
We’ve watched the newspaper industry’s struggle to innovate, and we won’t be left behind. Radio companies will be exploring new innovations as they arise, mining them for revenue opportunities.

11. Social media strategists and content curators will be standard positions in the radio industry.  
As radio’s digital efforts continue, companies will hire content producers and social media strategists to create online content, design individual station strategies, and measure results.

 

Get our your Magic 8 Ball and make a prediction of your own in the comments. I’d love to hear it!

 

Photo courtesy of Sassy-Stock at deviantart.com.

Think Like TV: Tips to Making a One-Way Medium Interactive

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The request lines don’t ring very often anymore. So, how can we make radio interactive without callers? Luckily, social media and texting became popular about the time calling in to a radio show became unpopular.

We have the opportunity to make our one-way medium a two-way interaction between us and the listeners. We also know that radio is a secondary medium. Listeners are doing something else while they listen. Why don’t we take advantage of this knowledge? Television does.


Here are some TV examples and how they apply to Radio:

1. Creating a Generic Hashtag for the Show

Every show on TV advertises its own Twitter hashtag where viewers can talk about the show. Create a hashtag for shows on your station so listeners can tweet their thoughts and opinions.

2. Showing Affinity for a Personality’s Polarizing Opinion

Last season, The X-Factor encouraged viewers to tweet #IAmSimon, #IAmLA, #IAmPaula or #IAmNicole to show their affinity for a certain judge’s comments during the show. The X-Factor generated an average of 94,000 social comments per episode, as recorded by Bluefin. How? By getting creative with hashtags, and promoting them constantly throughout the show.
Follow The X Factor model and also use hashtags for polarizing on-air topics. If you and your co-host have opposite opinions, encourage listeners to tweet who they agree with by creating unique hashtags. Plan this when you’re prepping for tomorrow’s show, so you can promote it before you begin the topic, as well as during the topic and afterward.

3. Creating Specific Hashtags for Real-Time Interaction

According to Carri Bugbee, the #TrumpRoast hashtag was used more than 27,000 times on Twitter during the March 2011 telecast of the Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump.

Comedy Central gave #TrumpRoast its own hashtag because they knew this episode would generate a reaction. If you have a hot feature that incites a huge reaction from listeners, create a separate hashtag for that feature. Promote it each time the feature runs on-air, and use the hashtag in your own tweets from the station or show accounts.

Include listener comments on-air in real time to make the show itself more interactive.

4. Developing Promotions Around Their Experience

The Shark Week Photo Frenzy – a call for fans to submit photos of how they celebrate Shark Week, got 600,000 page views and over 1,000 submissions. The Facebook Page accrued 30,000 fans in one day, and 116,000 in one week. The ratings result? The highest number of viewers in Shark Week history.

Dateline did something similar with their “How do you Dateline” promotion. They encouraged listeners to share their experience with the show by sending in video to Dateline producers about their routine around the program or tweeting #howdoyoudateline. They saw a huge response: over a 10 month span, the show’s audience on Facebook has grown to 173,000 users from 47,000. Their followers on Twitter doubled.

Keep your highest-rated show top of mind by creating a long-term promotion around your listeners’ experience. How do they listen? Are they listening at work, at the gym, in carpool? Ask them to share with a video or via Twitter. Award a prize to your favorite each week, and give individual shout-outs on-air. For example, “This song is for Vickie, who says she works out during the show”.

5. Driving Traffic to Your Website

According to to lostremote.com, The Food Network generated 640,000 page views in May from Pinterest alone with a strategy that focuses on both show content and talent.

Create strong website content that’s worthy of sharing. Share it via social media with carefully crafted teases to incite a click through. Measure your results frequently to determine which types of posts cause a spike in web traffic.

6. Listening to Feedback

Rick Haskins, The CW’s Executive Vice President of Marketing and Digital Programs, admits to lostremote.com that they not only listen, but respond to feedback. When viewers were watching CW shows illegally on pirate sites to avoid the three day delay on the CW app, the CW addressed the issue with the introduction of next day streaming on their own site.

Listen to the feedback. Respond with a solution when possible. If you don’t, your listeners might go somewhere else to find the content they’re looking for.

7. Providing Training for Staff

According to Rick Haskins, the CW provides social media training for their shows’ stars and productions staff.

If your Programming or Promotions staff isn’t capitalizing on the opportunities they have with social media, train them. Hold brainstorming meetings to encourage sharing among stations and shows, or hire someone (me!) who can teach them how to create a strategy that produces results.

 

Have you tried these TV tricks on your show? How did it work out?
Also published in Radio Ink Magazine

Trending on Twitter: Your On-Air Topic

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Your cigarette lighter is out of fluid and you have an electric stove. Pam Anderson is doing a book signing at the mall and you’re bummed you have to work. You think “loaded dishwasher” means your wife is drunk. These are white trash people problems, and apparently they resonate with people all over the world.

How do I know that? Not because I’m “white trash”, but because Tuesday The Dave Ryan Show at KDWB/Minneapolis had the #1 U.S. trend and the #2 worldwide trend on Twitter with #WhiteTrashPeopleProblems.

Dave says it all started when they were talking on-air about how Crisco saw a woman at the gas station leave her 4-year-old in the car while she purchased Mountain Dew and Lottery tickets. They brought up white trash people problems and tweeted a few, asking listeners to tweet their thoughts with the hashtag #WhiteTrashPeopleProblems. 90 minutes later the topic was the #2 trend in the world.

Starting a worldwide trend is every social media maven’s dream, and the goal of many social-media-savvy morning shows. Dave calls it the “Holy Grail of Twitter Success”. But what does it mean for radio? And how can your show create the next big Twitter trend?

What It Means

One Helluva On-Air Topic
A topic becomes a Twitter trend because the masses find it entertaining and relevant. If resonates with your audience, then your show that day was a hit even without the Twitter trend.

National or International Exposure
Starting a Twitter trend is free marketing, extending the market reach for your show (and the station, too). People who have never heard of your show or station are engaging with your on-air topic.

Increase In Cume
Thanks to streaming, the added exposure means you could acquire some new listeners.

More Followers
With a Twitter trend, many people will tweet the hashtag without ever knowing how it began. However, if you do a good job marketing with retweets that attribute your part in it, tweeps outside your market will gather that you started the trend. This should, as it did with The Dave Ryan Show, lead to a spike in Twitter followers for the show players and station. (Dave says his account received 500+ new followers in 24 hours.)

Street Cred with Listeners
It’s true. Telling listeners “thanks for helping us create the #2 worldwide trend on Twitter” makes you sound cool. And who doesn’t want to sound cool?

Part of the brand essence of radio stations and morning shows, especially in CHR, is to be on the forefront of trends. Having success on Twitter with a trend will support (or build) your morning show and station brands as “cutting edge.”

Happy Management
An on-air topic that goes viral. Free marketing for the show and station. Social media success. This translates to some credibility with management, too.

If that sounds good to you, keep reading.

Tips To Get Your Topic Trending on Twitter

1. Be Funny
Who doesn’t love to laugh, or to make someone laugh? A topic that’s funny has a good shot at being shared.

2. Be Relatable
The Dave Ryan Show knew that everyone could relate to white trash people problems. Admit it: you know someone (or are someone!) who has had these issues.

3. Be Universal
A topic that is only relevant to your market will only be shared in your market. Choose a universal topic and you’re more likely to create a national or international trend.

4. Keep It Simple
Get too creative and others won’t be able to devise their own tweets to help your hashtag rise to the trending topics list.

5. Promote It
Promote it on the air, and on Twitter using the hashtag. Let your Facebook fans know what’s happening on Twitter, too with a post that says something like “Tweet us with your suggestions for our topic using the hashtag #WhateverItIs. Not on Twitter? Leave us a comment here.”

When you start to achieve some success on Twitter in the way of retweets or tweets using the hashtag, share them on-air. Make it sound big and more listeners will participate. Share the best ones on-air and credit the user’s Twitter name when you do.

Learn more about Twitter trends here.

A Producer’s Dream: The Scoop on Scoop.It

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Scoop.It is a free publishing-by-curation platform that allows you to curate content based on keywords and sources you provide. It will suggest stories, articles, videos, news for you to scoop. You can also use the bookmarklet to scoop anything you see on the web to your Scoop.It page.

You can curate on your page and on the web, saving interesting content for your show in one place. You choose the keywords and the sources you like. Instead of searching a million websites individually, you add them here. It’s a Producer’s dream.

In October 2011, I signed up for Scoop.It to test it out before recommending to The Randy Lane Company clients. I quickly realized that not only was it worth recommending, but it would also be helpful  in curating show ideas for our weekly client newsletter.

Since October, I have been using Scoop.It daily. While some of the scooped ideas are used for the weekly Content Ideas, many aren’t because they are topical and may be outdated by the time the newsletter is delivered in client emails. Because I scoop the ideas daily anyway, I began sharing my page Radio On-Air Content on Twitter so the show prep doesn’t go to waste.

I now have thirty shows following my topic. Many have created their own Scoop.It pages for show prep where they can scoop their own topics from the web and rescoop mine to their page, as well. The trend has also spread to other radio consultants, who now run their own pages on Scoop.It.

The reason other shows and consultants have taken notice? It’s easy to use and it works.

Here’s how you can take advantage of this free tool for your show:

1. Sign up here.

2. Install the Scoop.It bookmarklet here. This will allow you to “scoop” anything on the web to the page you create for your show.

3. Add keywords for content that is relevant for your show. For example, relationships, sex, entertainment, parenting, family, music, weird. You can add keywords under the Manage tab under Manage Sources on your Scoop.It page (see image below).

4. Add sources. After adding your keywords, click the Advanced Options tab. Add the URL for any websites you normally use for show prep. You can also add social media accounts for any sources or shows you follow for content.

5. Scoop. When you’re prepping for the show, go to your Scoop.It page. Review Scoop.It’s suggestions and scoop the topics you like.

6. Follow other accounts on Scoop.It that produce content you can use on your show. You can follow mine here and check out the other shows and consultants I follow here.  You can rescoop their topics so they appear on your page. You will also get a daily digest showing you recent scoops from topics you follow.

Happy scooping! Let me know if you enjoying using Scoop.It for show prep. Leave me a comment or send me a tweet @StephanieWinans

If this doesn’t work for you, at least check out my page Radio On-Air Content daily for topics you can use for your show. Why not? It’s free show prep.