Own Your Audience

I want to share one simple digital marketing idea that will help you grow and help define your social media strategy. This is for my radio friends out there, but honestly, I think this applies to the for-profit and non-profit worlds. This idea stems from the many conversations I continually have with clients and prospective clients about how to measure the effectiveness and the ROI of their social media efforts.

Throughout the years, we've continued to see a decline in how many people we're able to reach. It doesn't matter how big our social media audience is or how much we know about the different changes in the Facebook algorithm.

The numbers continue to decline. Facebook likes, shares, comments and engagement. All of these numbers are fun and exciting to see and report on. They are big and flashy numbers. But I have also heard it said that these are vanity metrics.

These are the metrics that Facebook gets excited about! The more people that you and your radio station can get to Facebook engaging, the more money Mark Zuckerberg can make!

That's why I want to introduce a new metric I think is wildly important to your ministry and your business. I don't have a fancy name for it yet. (Send me your suggestions!)

We need to begin migrating our audiences from our unknown channels like social media to channels that we own like email, text message and mobile apps.

There is no algorithm on your email list you can reach out to your audience anytime you have a sale, announcement or fundraiser. There is great power and value in owning your audience.

I think back to my days at KCMS in Seattle. We would go to the local state fair or local events around and set up our radio booth. At this booth we would a radio personality (influencer) to interact, a prize wheel, prizes, bumper stickers and ways to “share” your love for the radio station. Sounds sort of like social media right?

We go to public forums to engage with our fans while also trying to get new fans.

There was always one key thing we would have at our radio booth. A pen, paper and entry box. We wanted to collect a prospective listeners contact information for future follow up!

This entry box is like paid social media and “Lead Generation” ad campaigns. It’s a great way to begin owning your audience.

If you’d like to dig a little deeper into the tactical ways to execute this, watch the video below.