Birds of a feather flock together. The old saying rings very true when it comes to media channels that drive social interaction instead of one way broadcasting. Media channels that have a ‘live’ mechanism to them are inherently channels that can entice and engage its fans/viewers/listeners in a very personal and social manner.

I would agree with the sentiment that radio is social. Let me rephrase this, good radio is social. It uses talk shows, open’s the lines up for conversations with listeners and is a great medium to connect with people in a personal manner.

Social media does the same, arguably with a bit more longevity to the conversations taking place. Through online conversations, that are the catalyst for opening up engagement with followers, social media touches its followers in a very unique and personal fashion.

Social media and radio are two peas in a pod. Social, engaging and exciting.

In my experience, when two social people get together the party just gets bigger and better. The same is true with campaigns, shows and conversations that utilize both radio and social media platforms to meet people.

How to best optimise radio and social media

DJ Fresh on 5FM

DJ Fresh on 5FM

  • Use the live nature of radio to build fanfare
  • Everyone likes a bit of fanfare. It excites us and makes us interested in getting involved in something. The problem is that it normally dies down quickly.

Radio is a great medium to create fanfare for its listeners. I would suggest coupling your radio campaign with social media based calls to action (tweet us, message us on Facebook, etc) in order to introduce your platform to listeners of radio. Once these people get caught up in the excitement they may join your social media channels in order to ‘get involved.’ Opening up the opportunity for you to keep your fans involved in your brand over a longer engagement period than your radio campaign (assuming your content and engagement is useful, interesting and inline with your radio campaign objectives).

Building better brand engagement

In the book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” the Heath brothers explain how the human brain works in remembering and idea.

Your brain hosts a truly staggering number of loops. The more hooks an idea has,the better it will cling to memory. Your childhood home has a gazillion hooks in your brain. Your credit card number has one, if it’s lucky.

Using radio and social media will allow you to build deeper brand engagement and more hooks in your customers mind. I think the biggest challenge would be to build a creative campaign that leveraged the live nature of radio and then extended it to a deeper social media engagement that allowed willing customers to spend a lot of time entrenched in the campaign.

Why social media and radio are best friends original posted on our Keynote Speaker – Mike Saunders blog

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