Lori Lewis has now been with us for nearly a year, during which time our company continues to gain a better sense for how radio can best utilize social media resources – and how that interrelates to its overall digital strategy.
As we’ve discussed on this blog before, many stations, clusters, and even companies are engaged in “random acts of digital,” moving from platform to platform almost as the mood strikes them.
Instead, we strongly recommend the “umbrella strategy” approach – a harder way to go on the front end, but ultimately smarter and more logical over time.
To that end, many station managers wonder about the value of having a Facebook fan (or “Like”) page versus the website or the email database.
They all are important to the brand, even if we sometimes struggle to quantify their precise contributions. With the website and the database, we have our own metrics and we “own” the component parts – advertising, page views, and the email names and their attendant data.
With Facebook, it’s never as simple. We all understand the importance of a social portal that has amassed 800 million people. And we should be preparing ourselves for some crazy, silly, but ultimately real valuations of Facebook’s IPO, set to launch later this year.
But when it comes to focusing on Facebook’s true contribution to a radio station brand, how can we make that determination?
Syncapse Corp. provides us with some clues in the chart below, lifted from their 2010 study called “Value of a Facebook Fan.” While radio isn’t selling any tangible product to consumers, I believe that spending levels between fans and non-fans tell an important story. Or at the very least, suggests that the fan connection has more value to the brand.
In several of these cases, Facebook fans spend double (or more) than those who have not connected with these brands.
Is there a TSL connection here for radio?
Do Facebook “fans” spend more time listening to your stations?
Are they more likely to visit your station advertisers?
These are all questions, by the way, that are included in Techsurvey 8, more than 170 stations strong. We are partnered with All Access and this year’s survey includes ALL formats. Our goal is to create an industry-wide profile to establish a benchmark for many of these digital conversations we have every day.
There is time for your station/cluster/company to participate and I encourage you to make this small investment in the future of your brands. Return On Engagement is an important new metric that we all need to learn more about.
Let’s figure it out together.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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