Talking to No One

I’ll always be a softy for radio. I spent too many years in the industry for it not to be in my blood. I sometimes wish it would go away; it reminds me of that old football injury that makes it hard to move in the morning, but you wouldn’t trade the pain for the time you had. Anyway, I digress. I was very optimistic last week when I was being probed about social media by a GM who I know of some radio stations.  Asking good questions, going to do some homework, etc.  I gave them some things to look at links and sites and said that after they absorbed what we talked about, they would return for more. We never even began to use or utter ‘Twitter’; Facebook would be challenging enough.   Even with this person in marketing, I’m sure that discussing Twitter would cause a brain meltdown. I checked out their Facebook sites, and sure enough, they have a station with over 2,000 likes and have never even made one post. It didn’t stop the fans who liked the page from contributing, although it was that no one from the station ever looked at the site to communicate or comment to their fans. It’s like there was a time when an on-air talent would pick up a phone. Today so much is voice-tracked that you can call all you want, but no one can answer. It’s a lot like the Facebook page that is getting ignored. Why do they want to continue to ignore their audience like this? I’m sure. Well, I hope there are radio stations that get it and have pages with good engagement and maybe cross-promote some clients. The conversation last week and seeing the one page made me look at a couple of markets I’m very familiar with. I’m looking at a Alternative Rock Station that has operates under a personal page and does an excellent job, I wish they were doing under a ‘Like’ page so that they don’t get shut down one day for operating as a business on a personal page. The same station also has a like page, and you guessed it: plenty of people are engaging on their wall, and there are zero posts by the station. In the few markets i looked at there were lots of mediocre at best pages and in some cases, just slapping a page up and calling it good. A couple of stations are doing a decent job, and some on-air talent is doing an excellent job, but all are under personal pages, not business pages. There is a tremendous amount of potential synergy between the two mediums that can have some real benefits, not just for the listeners but also for the businesses that advertise on those stations on Facebook. Taking care of and enhancing the consumer and the advertiser simultaneously would be worth a look.