Shhh.. Don’t Tell Your Social Media Followers This

1,  The interactions are for the benefit of your radio audience.  Your listener must feel as if they are a part of the online conversation.

2.  Encourage the listener to speak to you on their preferred social platform, telling their stories.  Their followers and friends don’t want to hear their friend interrupted by a radio personality.  Respond, react, support, engage.  They’ll like you if you add relevant content which moves them emotionally.  Your goal is not to impress them, it’s to get them to listen to the radio, go to your blog, your station website and sign up for your email newsletter.

3.  If someone shares something entertaining, message them and ask for their phone number so you can contact them and get them to get that story so you can record it, edit out all the extraneous chatter.  Don't forget that you're in radio, not social media, as your primary job.  You don’t want listeners to your show to get bored with “hello, how are you, thanks for giving me your phone number, etc.

4.  Edit laughs, team reactions and signs into and out of bits recorded perviously.  It’s even OK to cut a good laugh or clever rejoiner from one listener and cut it into one from another listeners as long as it flows well and sounds “live.” 

Social is a tool. It’s there to add immediacy and localism to your audio performance where the majority of your audience experiences you and the better your final product, the higher your usage and memorability (ratings) will be.

And, be sure to "friend" and "follow" me, so I can see how well you do it all.

Does Your Listener Know You're Interested?

International social media analytics firm Brandwatch's just-released report on radio listener Twitter activity in the U.S. and U.K. points out:
"Radio stations do not tend to reply to the comments aimed at them, seldom engaging with listeners at all." 

• Celebrity culture is a main driver of conversation, with over a quarter of all listener mentions relating to celebrity news, interviews or songs.
• Radio stations act upon this trend, with 41% of radio stations directing @interactions at celebrities and 32% towards brands.  

Would listeners like us better, telling their followers and friends about us in more positive ways if more of our Twitter conversations were listener-based? 

• The use of competitions as part of a social strategy was generally a successful tactic
• Of all personalities’ personal tweets, only 5.5% were about their radio station.
• Sport stations are the most social on Twitter, using @mentions to talk to their audience much more frequently than other genres.

Negative discussion centered around stations can gain rich insights from this social data, helping them understand which content works best.

Over the period analyzed, 1% of the conversation was negative. Although a seemingly small number, it accounts for 3,200 mentions, very few of which were responded to.

32% of social customers expect a response to a complaint within 30 minutes. Research by Nielsen demonstrates that 71% of consumers who experience a quick brand response are likely to share that with others.

To get the full picture you can download the full report for free here.