Facebook Radio Report Card 1/29/12

Here are some observations and data from monitoring the Facebook posts of 14 selected stations.

This week the News Feed for the stations came up with:

• 157 posts dating back 60 hours that's up from the 85 posts we had last week. 
• Types of Posts
• Station Liners - Plugs for contests, music features, etc - 16 or 10%
• Questions - "Are you watching American Idol" etc -48 or 30%
• News/Info - Links to Videos, funny Pictures or News facts - 74 or 47%
• Personality Posts - 'On my 2nd cup of Coffee need more'  - 14 or 9%
• Music News - Posts on upcoming releases, artist news -- 4 or 3%
• Top 5 Posts with most Likes
• 652 - A pic of Limp Biscuit - Pillsbury Dough can breaks - also 139 comments and 141 shares
• 285 - Paterno dies - news in Pittsburgh 
• 262 - Penguins win #500 in Pittsburgh
• 258 - Go Pats in Boston
• 229 - German gets 110,000 tax refund in error.
• Top 5 Posts with most Comments
• 196 - Stars you've seen or movies filmed in our city
• 163 - Pick superbowl in Pittsburgh
• 139 - Pic of Limp Biscuit
• 125 - Taco Bell for Breakfast
• 94- What did you do this weekend

Sports really picks up a lot more content this past week with the Superbowl teams all set.  There wasn't much on the Oscar nominations and no posts on political issues.  Remember we have Rock, AC, Country and CHR stations in this mix.  Rock stations had the most active and highest number of posts this week.   By the way the pic of the Limp Biscuit just in case you wanted to know:   

Facebook Radio Report Card 1/18/12

So what does Radio's overall Facebook Presence look like?

How are we using the social network?

What are we posting and what is working?

All of these are questions I'm sure everyone is asking as they decide how much effort and time Facebook is worth.  To get a picture I built a Facebook Page that only I can access and it is tracking 14 stations in Rock, CHR, Country, and AC formats to get a picture of what is posted each week and what the audience reaction in  Likes and Comments is.

Let's take a look at Wednesday 1/18/12 with an analysis taken around 10a Eastern.   The tracking on my Newsfeed here goes back to Sunday posts - so around 60 hours.   Here are some tracking facts:

• There were 85 posts in the News Feed - that's an average of 6 posts per station in the roughly 2 day period - so maybe 3-4 posts a day on the average.  

• Here is a rundown of the type of posts in the News Feed:
• Station Liners - Plugs for contests, music features, etc - 27 or 32%
• Questions - "Are you watching American Idol" etc - 12 or 14%
• News/Info - Links to Videos, funny Pictures or News facts - 30 or 35%
• Personality Posts - 'On my 2nd cup of Coffee need more'  - 8 or 9%
• Music News - Posts on upcoming releases, artist news -- 8 or 9%

• Top 5 reaction posts: 
• Station Contest - Trip to Hawaii in LA - 152 Likes
• News - Justin Bieber goes Brunette 155 Likes and 80 comments
• News - Kholhe K's ex gets cheers at Lakers Game in LA - 436 Like
• News - Pop bands logos in Heavy/Death Metal Fonts - 184 Like, 61 Comment, 38 Shares
• Question - State wants to ban PJs in Public - 70 Likes and 185 Comments

I tried to pick stations that did a fair amount of postings and had big Like numbers.   The big markets like LA, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Boston, and Philly are there but there are some smaller markets like Madison and Grand Rapids.   I plan on adding to the panel now that we have a trial run out there and track more of the content.  Of course I can't track all the metrics that are available to the Admin users at the stations, but we can at least see the Likes, Comments and Shares to get a basic picture.  If you have any suggestions on stations to add or other types of posts to track let me know via email- dlange210@att.net or with comments below.  Thanks.

Overall when you just look at a News Feed of Radio Brands it's a strange mix of posts.  The biggest reactions here are mostly for News and Questions.  The Station Liners really didn't do much in likes or comments unless they were contests that forced the audience to Facebook to win.  The most reactions came from the active evening personalities and their posts with Questions and News/web bits.  Is there a real strategy here to focus on the types of posts that get reaction or are we just throwing posts out there?

The other fact here was the lack of interaction from the Personalities in their posts.  Once they put it up there they rarely came back in to keep the conversation going or react to the audience.  

Social Networks - Too Much Activity?

The reality of interacting with your audience on Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook is that you can go un-noticed pretty quickly.

Right now Facebook claims over 800 million active users with around 50% of them logging on in any given day.  The average Facebook user has 130 friends and in an average day more than 250 million photos are uploaded everyday.  

In the Twitter world there are over a billion tweets posted every week.  Twitter users welcomed in 2012 with over 16,000 tweets per second on New Years Eve last weekend!!

While some grumbled at the changes from the Facebook F8 conference last fall to the News Feed - face it something had to be done.  We are all drowning in the posts from our friends and also from the many celebrities, movies, TV shows, Radio stations, products, stores, and political pages and Twitter accounts we follow.   

When I look at my news feed with around 500 friends and maybe 30 brands/personality pages I'm linked to I end up with around 20 posts an hour during the day. My full news feed page maybe covers 2-3 hours.  In Twitter it can move even faster.  Of course every week I add new friends and followers so in a year these numbers will climb a lot. 

Also keep in mind that Facebook IS filtering what hits my news feed.  They are looking at my past interaction (reading, linking, sharing, or commenting) with each of my friends and brand likes and deciding who is important.  They are also looking at what is posted by each of my friends/brands and deciding if it might be interesting to me on a long list of priorities.  Just as Google looks at my search history and sorts out what might be the best sites for me Facebook is also doing that for what appears on my News Feed.   

So now you are getting set to do some posts on your station's Facebook page or hit the Twitter button.  Is your message going to breakthrough?  Or are you just wasting your time?  

To get better at interacting with the audience on Social Media you need some feedback.   Yes some metrics or statistics or ratings that tell you what the audience is doing with your interaction.  And you need to develop a strategy behind the data to make sure what you post or tweet has a chance.  The other challenge is that the listener's News Feed is filling up every minute with more stuff and even with good content you can fall off the feed before they even see it.  

Some have taken to posting all the time to stay on the news feed, but remember that you don't want to become the 'evil' spam-master of Facebook.  Yes, the News Feed filter also looks for 'spam' and filters it out.  We also have the ultimate goal of getting the audience to interact with the ultimate source here - the broadcast signal.  Perhaps down the road we'll be important enough in the Social Media Web to make all our dollars from the digital side, but for now (and probably forever) we need to get them to tune in or stream in.  

The key is getting good feedback.  Know how many people saw your post, how many hit any links, looked at the pic, rolled the video, commented, shared and also who they are.   You can get most of this info if you have a Facebook analytic program, although many programs can be hard to read or navigate. Even bigger than just having the data you need to keep track of what worked and what didn't.  Once you have this data - now you have a chance to build a strategy to become more effective.   But, we have to hurry - next New Year there will probably be 50,000 tweets a second and we'll have 500 Facebook friends to keep up with and 5 times the posts we have today.   

2012 Trends

As we head into 2012 there are a number of 'trends' developing that are worth noting. I don't want to call these predictions - just some areas that affect our audience that are emerging and worth watching:

• Social Networks - They continue to grow and occupy the lion's share of most people's on-line time which seems to grow even more as more smart phones and mobile apps allow you to be on-line all the time.  The big trend in 2011 was the evolution of the networks to complete mass acceptance.  There are nearly a billion FB accounts and the marketing/branding world is out in full force and with FB going public in 2012 they will dominate the news.  Those who don't master social networks for building their brands and realize how to integrate the potential of radio's huge reach into a social network strategy will be ones that hold back our industry.  Right now it's a 2 team world - the rest of the networks are small niche players at best - to play you have to look at these 2:
• Facebook - Will continue to grow and evolve but it's not the new kid on the block and every change will be widely challenged.  Marketers and brands are also taking up lots of content space here and could hurt FB if they are not careful.  The minute FB seems more like corporate hype and one big un-creative banner ad it could be replaced.  
• Twitter - It's the service with momentum right now with 400 million users in sight soon.  Marketing in a 140 character world is a challenge.  This will be the opportunity in 2012 much as Facebook became a force for radio brands in 2010 and 2011. 
• The Election - We have SO MUCH media space to fill that this election will be a pretty tiring event for the audience.  Look at the developments as they relate to radio content here: 
• Super PAC and PAC money - The high court ruling that PACs can spend as much as they want has set the stage for a nuke explosion of dollars to be spent.  
• More Talk FMs - While we haven't seen them pull shares yet - they will pull in lots of dollars and we can also expect to hear a lot about this election in the commercials.   Just look at Iowa where the airwaves are flooded and it's only a Republican Caucus.  
• All over the Net - On the social networks, on your phone, all over your searches and dominating any web site you visit with targeted political content.  Your computer and your TV will look like this for 6 to 7 months:

• 
  
• Content - We have tons of political web sites, news services, networks, TV stations, cable news services, network news, bloggers, on-line news sites, newspapers, magazines and PAC sites disguised as news sites all searching for the big story to draw all eyes their way.  And they have to do it over and over again with the onset of each news cycle.  Is it any wonder that any Washington story can suddenly become a crisis?  Is some of the grid lock in congress coming from too many sides to any issue and a media so fixed on everything that everyone is afraid to move?  
• Overload - This all sets up radio for a complete overload of our airwaves.  

• PPM - As we gather more data and see more of the PPM listening trends expect to see more programming ideas and rules change.  Bow Tie clocks, quick fire entertainment/personality, tighter show prep, an evolution in imaging tactics, and lots of concern over sample size.  
• Research - The industry needs a full overhaul.  We have so much data from the web, PPM, On-line surveys, Facebook Metrics, and web searches that the old music test or perceptual seems like super slow motion in a hypersonic world.
• Being Local - Even as we see more trends to syndicated and voice tracked dayparts remember that just because we don't have someone local behind the mic doesn't mean that a brand or station cannot be a HUGE force and have a BIG local presence.  Take an honest look at what the 'local personalities' did to really be local on the air and off - there are more people who are just voices on the transmitter here than real people in the community.  
• Being Authentic - The real key to marketing our clients products/services and building our brands is CONTENT.  Having creative content that is authentic and draws the attention of the audience is the only way to build any momentum in today's marketing universe.  We have so many delivery options from broadcast, the web, social networks, going viral, You Tube, billboards, print, product placement, sports tie ins and who knows what else that the audience is drowning in hype.   The only way to rise above the hype is to have some authentic entertaining content.   If we'd start to focus on building this into the campaigns we sell (both on the air and in the digital world) we will become a huge force in marketing again.  
• New Web Gadget/Gimmicks - Last year we saw the rise of Pandora and the lure of Groupon.   In the end we can see how both are fairing in the stock world.  Pandora went public and while it held it's ground it's not likely to light the world on fire in a business sense.  Trying to mount a local sales force for Pandora in every market and living in a royalty world that will limit their income as they grow is not a model that will sell on Wall Street.  Groupon is too easily copied and really ends up being just another hyped up marketing model.  Really radio answered these threats pretty well - the advance of the CBS and Clear Channel into the streaming world is a good answer.  Groupon is being hit a lot by local stations that have built their own answers for clients.  There will be new gadgets next year - maybe one of them will be RADIO!!! We do have lots of advantages that are being ignored. 
• Music - A big transition year.  Rap/Hip Hop is getting pretty extreme in the language and topics.  The pop world has been living for a long time on the young world of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Ga Ga and their LPs from 2 years ago.  What will evolve?  Indie Rock with unique instruments, lyrics, and presence?  A new breed of rocker that isn't a copy of Nickleback? An authentic country voice that isn't really a pop singer in boots? A singer songwriter that impacts the Hot AC and AC world - or is that Adele?  Watch for new music on your desk this year -- the audience is ready for the Next Thing not a rehash of the last thing. 

The real note here is that we have a restless audience.  They are ready to 'occupy anything' because they are ready for something different and perhaps new.  But, in the end they are looking to be entertained and being a part of a community.  The other challenge is a world where there are new product distribution options all the time - staying on top of them and investing quickly and wisely will keep our brands in front of the audience.  If we can keep those areas as our top priorities making money, building EBITA, hitting budgets and keeping Radio a strong player in the mix will happen automatically.  Happy 2012!!!!   

The Personalization Bubble

As we work in our Broadcasting world and the ever increasing Social Media and Web world that we interact and build our audience's with there are some important lessons here in this presentation by Eli Pariser at a recent TED conference.

His thought here is that in our web and digital world we are living in such a personalized bubble that is filtered constantly analyzing everything we read, share, click on, and interact with that we can end up living in our own world.  Very interesting thought - and the more you think about it - very true.

We come from Broadcasting where the only filter is - changing the channel to another station.  It does give the audience a community.   Eli's view here is that in the Personalized web world we could be turning into individualists.

The other thought to take away is 'how to work and interact in the individualistic world the audience is building - with the help of the Social Media sites and Search Engines.  

Times Are A Changing As Always

Perhaps it's the holiday season or the excitement of a new year approaching, but I've been thinking about the some broad stroke perspectives.   

As we enter 2012 we are in the middle of celebrating some anniversaries.  We will soon have around 20 years of the web under our belts -- the first Nexus browser came out in 1990 and the Mosaic browser (far easier to use and the template for what we have today) in 1993.  It was around 10 years ago in 2002 when High Speed Internet access was only in 10% of the homes - now it's well over 70%.   And when you really look back to around 30 years ago we saw personal computers move from being a hobby to a full fledged industry with Apple- IBM squaring off and Microsoft starting to brew software.  It was also around 20 years ago that we saw the first portable cell phones that could actually be carried around without a bag or a being the size of a brick - those 1980s lug-able phones are nearly 30 years old now.

These evolutionary anniversaries signal some big changes in all of lives here on Planet Earth.   Look at some of the random examples that seem to stand out when you step back : 

• Christmas Cards - Notice that you are getting fewer and fewer every year?  Sending off a few Email cards, dropping everyone a tweet or a Facebook greeting, or perhaps a text will do. 
• Paper - We seemed to be drowning in paper 30 years ago.  So much of what we did in transacting our lives and creating content came from using paper.  While we still use a lot of the stuff - we can see a day when paper will be rare - sort of like stone tablets. 
• Physical Presence: In the 80s and 90s we began to see the potential of a world where we were able to have a nearly full communication experience without needing a physical exchange. 
• Telephones - It's clearly the all purpose tool of the future.  If you go back to the big inventions of 100 or so years ago it would have to be the mass acceptance of - Autos, Electricity, Airplanes, Phones and Radio/TV.   While all of these has evolved to some degree the biggest growth has clearly come in phones over the last 30 years.  It's been able to evolve and morph with so many other innovations.  
• World Communication - The planet has never seemed closer in a connected way, yet we also seem to be showing more division in beliefs and struggling to find common ground in many ways.  It's great that we can all communicate so freely but it also requires that we have open minds and be curious and tolerant of a planet that will pass 7 billion people early in 2012.  
• Demographics and Generations - We are moving faster in communication and information with every generation to a point where the gaps between various age groups is sometimes dramatic.  Look at all that has evolved and changed to a person who is in their 70s or 80s today.   We are moving at an ever increasing rate of speed that requires that you keep up or fall way behind. 
• Elections - It will be a big year for big talk.  The influence of the evolution of our communication abilities is having a huge impact on elections.  With all the discussion of issues and drama, that is so open and interactive, elections, and our expectations of the leaders that evolve from them, is something we will have to learn and adjust to.  Maybe we will realize that Superman was fiction - none of us on this planet is that good.    Maybe the people will regain their voices in a world that seems to be more and more influenced by commerce over community. 

I'm sure you have lots of examples to add here, but as we get set for 2012 the big point that  there is a lot to reflect on.   It should be an exciting year as we start to see economies recover, perhaps some hopes for a more peaceful planet as a number of countries/cultures are evolving and changing, and the ability to communicate so quickly and freely continues to speed up our evolution.   

It will also be a year when we will no doubt hear a lot about the Mayan Calendar which seems to end on December 21st by all of the calculations and speculation we can piece together.   While some have predicted the end of the world and cosmic events - perhaps we have been working towards a big moment in our evolution and that is what they foresaw. 

How Sample Changes the Game

The recent news that an analysis of Facebook friends has shrunk the old 6 Degrees of Separation theory down to 4.74 world wide and 4.37 in the U.S.  You can read all about it here.  This is a significant finding to all of us in radio programming on a couple of levels:

1. The Audience is woven tighter than we imagined.  The real power to spread your reach and to gain more P1s really lies in the audience you already have.  If you can start a 'spark' in that group it can spread quickly.  The key is starting the spark.  
2. Social Networks are playing a huge role.  The ability to interact with the audience and grow it's size has never been easier.  
3. Sample Size does matter.   We've always lived on random sample world of the normal curve and standard deviations to predict the size of our audience, the music they like, the images they carry on our products.  The original study in the 60s that produced the 6 Degree theory was based on 296 volunteers who sent postcards to friends.  The Facebook 4.7 Degree theory was based on breaking down the 'friends' data of millions of users.  They had ample data from everyone on Facebook to see who they were connected to.  This is a 25% difference in the numbers here.   That is a pretty big swing from one study to the other.   Consider if you downloaded your next book and found the numbers swinging 25% up or down for no obvious reason.  The bigger sample size did show a significant difference in the result.  

The real lesson for us here are points 1 and 2.  If you start to visualize your audience as an interlinked group of people and start to interact with them on their level you have the potential to develop a huge reach.  Working from the 'bottom up' - one listener to another - is the path to building your reach.  

No Time For Social Media??

Just what the programming team needed, another task to accomplish.   Chances are your brand is trying to  keep up with the audience and the community while you seem to have fewer players on the team than you ever imagined a few years ago.

Now you've made the dive into Social Media in addition to your web site and of course keeping the content hot out of the speakers.  The Facebook Page and the Twitter worlds need attention if you are going to build and interact with your listeners.   Having just 2,000 likes when your on-air cume is 100,000 doesn't make Facebook very effective.   Just posting some pics on the page and pushing the air staff to 'post some stuff' won't help you develop a conversation with the audience or build the size of your fans in either Twitter or Facebook.   It has to be topical, entertaining, unique and clever if it's going to have an impact on the audience.  Obvious self promotion can be a big problem in building you brand - this audience is pretty marketing savvy and doesn't enjoy boring tricks.

The key to making Facebook and Twitter work is having an organization or a system so you can start to get a view of what is working and what is not.  Just like we have Selector to help us play the HITS more often and control the music  you need to have some kind of system to manage the posts on Facebook and Twitter.  Having a system that also makes it easy to create in is also a big plus.  Being able to post videos, pics, audio, flash, links, and with a system that is simple for everyone to grasp.  You can't spend hours messing around with training or complex computer systems.

We also need to know what is working and what is being ignored or damages our brand.  Just as we used charts, sales, call out, research and requests to get a picture of the music we play we need data here on how the audience interacts with the posts.

Then there is monitoring the pages.  Keeping the language under control, making sure no one is spamming you and your audience and also being able to follow up on any questions or complaints from the fans.  You can't spend your life with Facebook on your screen 24/7 to be the site police.

Lastly you have to use all the features of the page.   Making up contests, building tab pages, linking the stream, promoting events, directing them to the website, adding them to your database, and biggest of all getting them to listen to the station more.   You also have to do all of this within Facebook's rules.  Forgetting to use their contest rules and follow their regulations can cost you your page and all of it's fans.

Opps almost forgot you also have to keep up with the Facebook and even Twitter news feed scoring systems.  Appearing on your fan's news feeds with the new system of top stories is even harder than it was.  You have to have relevant, vibrant and topical content to get in their club today.  The only way to improve is to keep an eye on your progress and measure what is working and not working.  You need constant feedback to keep up.

To get all of this you'll need a lot of sources.  There are publishers and some include some analytics.   Facebook also tells you some facts about how the fans are using your pages in their metrics.  You can go to your graphic/web team to try and get help designing Tab pages for contests etc.   Facebook does some monitoring for you, but it may not keep your team from needing to watch the page.  Lots of jumping around for the facts here.

Then, of course, you have to manage the team.  Teach them how to use all these tools and how to entertain the audience in a medium that nearly everyone is still learning about.   It's also a world where Facebook or Twitter can change the rules at anytime or one where new tactics can pop up and change the game quickly.

The big brands are hiring whole teams to manage their Social Media presence.    Look at the Gatorade Social Media HQ!!!

There are programs to help you get it all organized.  There are system developing here, if you want to know more contact me.   dlange210@att.net