The Biggest Problem your Radio Station has on Facebook

In what is perhaps a typical radio station scenario, 70% of the inbound traffic to the station’s website comes from social media.

That’s right.

Not from over-the-air promotion, not from organic search, but from social media.

And 50% of that traffic comes from Facebook, specifically.

That means more than one-third of that brand’s inbound digital traffic comes from Facebook.

What do these percentages look like for your brand?

Now, what are you doing to expose your best content on Facebook such that listeners want to find it, and don’t only consume it, enjoy it, and share it, but also act by clicking through to your website and by tuning in your station?

We know Facebook is the equivalent of your radio station’s water cooler. It’s where all the word-of-mouth happens. But it only happens if you make it happen.

Forget radio for a moment. I took a look at TMZ’s Facebook page. I found…

  • A photo of TMZ t-shirts and a link to the TMZ Store
  • A link to TMZ’s Firetalk page, where fans can enjoy 24/7 interactive video produced by TMZ
  • A link to a new TMZ post about Charlie Sheen
  • A two-minute native Facebook video produced by TMZ
  • Two more links to new TMZ posts
  • Another native Facebook video produced by TMZ

That’s just six hours of content.

What does it all have in common?

It’s all produced by TMZ and directly supports the consumer value and expectation and the business model of the TMZ brand.

Compare that to 24 hours of Facebook posts from one major market radio station:

  • A repurposed TMZ celebrity video
  • A contest with no email opt-in opportunity and no reason to listen to win
  • A brief tribute to a deceased star of TV’s Jackass repurposed from CNN
  • A video of Demi Lovato covering Adele repurposed from elsewhere
  • A question: “Do you have the worst job in town?”

Now these types of posts will feel very familiar to you, and there’s nothing wrong with sharing content with your audience that speaks to the broader cultural connection you have in common. It is, after all, the stuff they find relevant.

But if that’s all you publish, then why do they need you at all? Why not go straight to TMZ or X17 or Buzzfeed or any of a hundred other platforms that are built to out-gossip you by creating and disseminating this content (and profiting from it). Meanwhile, every time you share their content you validate their business model and raise the question: Are we no more than a curator of the content of others? Are we viral also-rans? And as such, do listeners really need us on Facebook at all?

Where’s the content made by us for our audience? Where’s the content from our air? From our studio? From our staff? From our fans? Where’s the content that makes listeners say, “I need to listen to this right now!”

We measure likes and shares and comments, but if you’re in the radio business these are vanity metrics. The real metric that matters is this:

To what degree does your social media strategy inspire consumers to visit your digital platform and/or listen to your station either online or on-air?

Is there really any other metric that matters?

Mark Ramsey is a veteran media strategist, researcher, and trend-maker who has worked with numerous media, publishing, and digital brands.

You can contact Mark Ramsey by heading to his website markramseymedia.com

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