Social media has become the marketing channel of choice for the web 2.0. Unlike traditional marketing, it involves engaging with your listeners, talking with them and showing them that you’re listening. Social Media is all about sharing, and by making your station part of your listeners social life you will get their loyalty and they will spread the word to their friends. Clever social media marketing can be of great benefit to any company, and it’s especially good for the following things:

- Listener engagement
With Social Media marketing, you are talking to your listeners and they are talking back to you. That makes them feel more involved with your station, since its marketing efforts become much more personal. If you do it right and actually engage with your listeners, you will see them becoming more loyal your station. However, as anything on the web 2.0, this is a two way street. If you want your listeners to listen to you, they need to know they are being heard as well. If your station doesn’t feel living and your communications are announcements that could be made by a robot, don’t expect the attention starved social listeners to give you their time.
- Station credibility
For many listeners, stations that use Social Media seem more open, trustworthy and connected to the times. Showing no fear of having a conversation with your audience is a very positive trait for any station. At the same time, a mistake can brand your station a hypocrite and be very damaging. Information spreads faster than light on the Internet, both the good and the bad.

- Get fast listener feedback
Having an active line of dialogue with your listeners means that you can ask them questions, and get much faster results than by running a poll or waiting for them to answer a phone call. Asking on Twitter “What do you think of our website redesign” will get you hundreds of answers in a matter of hours. Many of our stations already harness the power of instantaneous Internet communication by asking their listeners questions and including their answers on air.

- Low cost
Social Media is, compared to traditional advertising, very low cost. Even paid ads on networks such as Facebook, highly targeted at specific profile types, are usually PPC and relatively cheap. And there’s many ways of using Social Media as a marketing tool for free, from creating a Twitter account to a Facebook group of page, or even a company blog.

Managing your Social Media strategy must become a part of your daily duties. It’s not only about checking the Facebook page every so often, it’s also about reacting to what listeners are telling you, and quick. Listeners expect Social Media to be much quicker to answer than traditional communication methods.

- Viral marketing
If your Social Media strategy works well and your content is suitable for it, viral marketing is a natural consequence of it. If your listeners consider your content fun, interesting or just worth sharing they will retweet it to their followers, post about it on their Facebook walls or Digg it. This will instantly put your station in front of the eyes of thousands of new listeners who didn’t know about you before, who may become listeners and keep sharing your content.

The station that uses Social Media effectively will become more relevant to its present and potential listeners. Remember it’s not only for reaching potential listeners but there are effective strategies that are now aimed at reaching potential radio advertisers. For information on how Social Media can help your station succeed contact Eric Corwin or send a confidential email to corwin@higherratings.com.