Facebook Radio Report Card 4-26-12

This is turning into an interesting week for content and postings on Facebook from our 'focus group' of 25 active stations in a variety of music formats.   In 4 months of tracking we have seen weeks when stations grew their likes and built more comments and likes on posts.  We've also see some weeks where sharing was up.  This week we really don't have any 'huge' topics that seemed to be generating lots of reaction.  No huge new music releases this week - last week we had a lot more comments and posts on music.  No big gossip or news this week and really no big events on TV or in Movies that were big topics.  Many posted on Obama slow jamming the news and the news that teens where trying to get a buzz on hand cleaners - but without much reaction.

The 2 biggest reaction posts show how Facebook works best at uniting a community and how radio can build the bonds between it's audience on Social Media.  Two huge posts came out of WGCI in Chicago and the topics showcase them bonding with their audience in a very human and touching way:

Top Likes From Posts:

1. 3,047 Likes  WGCI Chicago - Brain Dead Mom Gives Birth to Twins - Done over 2 posts 
2. 2,828 Likes   WGCI Chicago - 10 Year Anniversary of Death of Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes - 2 posts
3. 595 Likes - Project 961 Atlanta - Hump Day Female Model pic
4. 422 Likes - Q95 in Indy - Pic of Face in a Shadow - do you see it below. 
5. 376 Likes WGCI Chicago - Beyonce Is People's Most Beautiful Woman 
6. 337 Likes KQRS Minneapolis - Solider 'Britney' returns after duty and ready to rock on KQ
7. 331 Likes WEBN Cincy - Free Gas Card contest
8. 262 Likes Science finds most beautiful girl in stats. 
9. 257 Likes KQRS Minneapolis - Pic of Fat Cat weighing over 40 lbs. 
10. 227 - Likes - Alice Cooper and Steve Carell pics - see below 
11. 212 Likes Z100 NYC - DJ Card - all songs with Pitbull see below.

Top Comments from Posts: 

1. 656 Comments  Project 961 Atlanta - Girl banned from Prom with Confederate Flag dress - see below
2. 534 - Comments on Science and the most beautiful girl
3. 165 - Team gets the job done - see below

The top shares went to the Fat Cat with 120 shares - not a lot of sharing going on this week. 

You can see the audience activity is growing week by week with more likes and stronger comments when you have the right material in the posts that really grabs the audience in some way.  

Also note in WGCI posting pattern here that they very often take a topic or post and do it a couple of times over a 24 hour period.  Consider how fast the News Feeds often update and how soon you can see a post fall to the bottom of the feed and not get noticed by the people who just check a couple of times a day.  Also note that on your Time Line page (which is all you have now) you can see a post just fall off after a day or two and then you skip to last month or posts from long ago.  Posting a couple of times when you have something that is hot is important.  With the new world of Facebook moving faster you need to adapt if you want to stay on their News Feed and be on your Time Line page.   

Facebook Radio Report Card 4-19-12

Greetings and welcome to this weeks Report Card on the 'Focus Group' of 25 very active Radio Stations in a variety of music formats tracking their posts on Facebook over the last 3 days (4-17 to 4-19-12).  The overall posting trends revolved around a few events this week including:

• Dick Clark's passing drew a number of posts from AC, Classic Hits, and some Rock stations.  
• Clear Channel outlets had a number of posts promoting specific artist channels on I Heart radio that seemed to be coming from a central post scheduling system.  In CHR-Rhythmic stations they were pushing a Drake stream.  In Country Brantley Gilbert's channel.  In Rock a channel around Soundgarden with their new release this past week and for AC a Jason Mraz feed.  It increased the number of "Music" posts by a big margin. 
• The recent 'study' that claim we could save 7 billion by legalizing marijuana was also posted by a number of rock stations with considerable comment levels.   

Here is a breakdown of the post categories over the 3 days with 268 posts tracked: 

Station Liners - 13%

Pics, News, Links, - 38%

Music news/links - 32%

Contests - 8%

Polls-Questions - 7%

Posts with the most Likes: 

• Meth and Elmo - pic below - 647
• Keith Richards poster - 532
• Sean's Mom passes from WDVE pic tribute post - 530
• Home Depot aisle sign - pic below - 330
• Pitt Penguins not out of it yet poster - 391
• Pic of Sign - Zombies can't swim buy a boat - 262
• Tribute to KINK announcer Les Spanoff on anniversary of passing - 262
• Pic of Woman sitting on big tree stump - big wood - 260
• Cat drifting in pool in a box - poster - 237
• Text Message need a dictionary - 232
• Baby poster - see below - 221
• MTV played videos - see below - 190 

Most Comments

• Sean's Mom passes at WDVE - 569
• Is this pic a 'butt' or is it 'cleavage' - 132
• Zombies can't swim - 95

Top Shares

• Keith Richards poster - 272
• Pitt Penguins poster - 151
• Meth & Elmo - 150
• Zombies can't swim - 94
• Cheap I Pad - see below - 91

We did have more shares this week and comments were slightly off on many posts.   

Facebook Radio Report Card 4-11-12

The impact of Facebook's Time Line on the news feed from our 'focus group' of 24 stations in various music formats continues to show fewer posts making it past the new feed as we continue to see older posts taking up more space.  To overcome this we look at the individual walls more and find more 'Station Liners' and 'Contests' showing up there but not making it to the news feeds.  The lack of comments and interaction with them is probably the reason.   Overall activity in Likes, Comments and Shares continues to grow with many posts topping 100 likes.    Let's take a look at the categories of the posts from 220 posts over the 3 day period from Easter to 4/11:

Categories of Posts: 
Station Liners - 27%
News - Pics - Links - 47%
Music News - 11%
Polls - 2%
Contests - 3%

Top Posts for Likes:
642 likes - Derek Rose to be a Father -
510 likes - Poster - 'Stay Strong'  shown below
250 likes - Poster - 'Auto Correct quit correct my swearing'
207 likes - Keith Urban in Grand Ole Opry
194 likes - Twitter tweets about Titanic anniversary - most didn't know there was a real ship?
191 likes - Cops arrest naked guy with bunny ears on Easter - pic
186 likes - Article on why black barbers take longer to cut hair.

Top Posts for Comments: 
246 comments - Pic of Large Woman in very tight shorts
194 comments - Debate on woman's rights after sending boy friend nude pics.
187 comments - Pic of Guy wearing very high wasted jeans
155 comments - On the Twitter Titanic tweets

Top Shared Posts: 
110 shares - on poster of little kid - staying strong for weekend (shown below)
104 shares - On poster about Swearing (shown below)

Facebook Radio Report Card 4-4-12

A number of changes in our Focus Group of Facebook Radio Station Postings this week as the new Facebook Timeline has 'become law' in the land of Social Media.   You can see older posts turning up in the news feeds that have built up reactions and views over a longer time.  There are also a lot more posts that are not making it to our 'news feed' and for this week's report we dug into each of the stations' wall/timeline to see more of their posts for the report.   That also means that lots of posts that used to be in the listener's news feeds are fading away.  Time Line will change the posts that get viewed on your wall and that will also change the posts that make it to your fan's news feeds.

This week our 40 hour window covered 178 posts from a sample of 24 active stations in a variety of music formats.  Here is a breakdown of the categories of the posts:

• Station Liners - 16%
• News-Videos-Pics - 52%
• Music News - 16%
• Contests 8%
• Polls/Questions - 8%

Top Posts for Likes: 

• Travon Martin - Picture collage from WGCI -- 2,330 Likes
• Picture of Overweight girl and drawing of Jabba the Hut - 890 Likes at Project 961
• Hump day - sexy butt pic - 522 Likes at  Project 961
• Reggie Miller in Hall of Fame at WFBQ - 490 Likes
• Wango Tango Announcement on KISS LA - 366 Likes
• Bad Girl Club 8 in bar fight video from WGCI - 350 Likes

Tops in Comments: 

• Overweight girl and Jabba the Hut - 244
• Caption a pic of a guy looking at another guy's butt from KQRS - 141
• Pic of kid from Problem Child looking spooky - 125
• Jock not trimming toenail - pic - 110 

In Sharing only 2 posts really stood out.  The Travon Martin picture board had 128 shares and the Overweight Girl's drawing took on 151 shares. 

The Clear Channel stations were starting to tease and build up the I Heart Radio show which I suspect will spread to more and more of their Facebook postings as the week progresses.  KISS in LA had a number of posts on the announcement of their annual Wango Tango show coming over the Summer.  The Travon Martin controversy continues to draw lots of attention with the Rhythmic and Urban stations.   

Project 961 had a lot of highly ranked posts.  Now that they have over 100K in their Facebook likes you can see more and more fans are engaging with their posts.   While Project 9-6-1 has around 104,000 likes they have over 12,000 talking about them on Facebook.   Compare that to Z100 with over 230,000 likes and around 10,000 talking about them.   

Of all the formats represented here you can see the most action on the Rock and Urban stations.   CHR's are close behind then we see a big drop for Country and lastly AC stations which seem to have the lowest like counts and not a lot of interaction.   It seems odd that AC stations with high female numbers are not growing their fan likes as much and engaging them as actively as the other formats here.   

The pic of the week didn't get into the top ranks of Likes, Comments or Shares, but it's is unique and spreading.  

Facebook Radio Report Card 3-28-12

Posts seemed to be a little light this week on Facebook from our panel of 25 stations in all formats.  Perhaps there wasn't the volume of new music releases, the opening for Hunger Games, the debate/coverage of the teen murder in Florida, and some of the other topics we had last week.  This week seems a bit light so far.  Still we do have some big reaction posts - the audience seems to be engaging with the stations in our focus group more every week.

Here is a breakdown of the topic categories covered in the 188 posts we saw over a 36 hour span this week.

• Station Liners - 14%
• Pics - Links - Videos - News - 50%
• Music links/videos - 14%
• Contests - 12%
• Polls and Questions - 10%

Top Posts for LIKES: 

• Adam Levine poses nude for Breast Cancer research in Cosmo - 1,442 likes
• Lady in bikini mowing he grass - 868 likes
• Kid's excuse note (below) - 614 likes
• Worship Sign (below) 601 likes
• Gonna Win Mega Millions and quit - 358 likes
• Showing too much booty - 298 likes
• Beer at end of rainbow in truck (below) - 289 likes
• Mamogram for Men cartoon (below)- 274 likes

Top Posts for Comments:

• Adam Levine nude - 291
• Bikini mowing grass - 286
• Octomom poses topless - 176
• Miss Canada a Male? - 149

Top Posts for Shares: 

• Adam Levine poses nude - 225
• Worship sign - 176
• Smart tracking dog looks at underwear and pulls away (pic) - 130 

You can still see some Urban and Rhythmic stations with posts and comments around the teen killing in Florida.   The continued warm Spring is also in lots of posts and pics.  Over the next week we'll see the Easter break hit and the Spring rating period gets rolling so we'll see how our focus group of stations react on Facebook.   

Facebook Radio Report Card 3-21-2012

A fairly active week on Facebook for Radio.  The release of Hunger Games was a big topic on CHR and some AC stations, Tim Tebow and Payton Manning got good coverage, Urban and Rhythmic stations did pose topics around the teen murder case in Florida. Project 961 in Atlanta hit 100,000 likes with it's contest and the station tour by boy band - One Direction - got a lot of action.

Let's take a look at the overall post numbers in our 'focus group' of stations in all music formats.

Total Posts for the Tuesday 3/20 and Wednesday 3/20 18 hour window - 215.  Here is the category breakdown:

• Station Liners - 50 - 27%  - Plugs for station events or programming
• Contests - 16 or 7% - Either actual on FB contests or liners for contests.
• Polls or Questions - 34 or 16% - FB polls or topics with questions/comments
• Links Funny Pics/Videos/News - 71 or 22% - Posts with links and pics/videos
• Music News/Videos - 36 or 17% - Posts covering music or artist news/videos/songs

The posts with the Most likes in our sample included: 

• 902 Likes for the 961 Atlanta posts around their run to 100,000 Facebook Likes.  This is the total number for 2 posts on the event during the monitor window. 
• 755 Likes for 2 posts following Hines Ward's retirement announcement in Pittsburgh
• 449 Likes for the Z100 posts on the station visit from One Direction - A total of 3 posts on the topic. 
• 419 Likes for a post on WGCI Linking to the new E40 Video
• 399 Likes for a picture post on unique shirt message - posted below. 
• 329 Likes for a kid's drawing off Zombies in the after life. 
• 290 Likes for a discussion post from WGCI on the Florida teen killing.

Big Comment producing posts: 

• 235 Comments on the Project 961 100K FB promotion.
• 193 Comments on a question post on teachers spanking kids
• 79 Comments on story of a woman who kidnapped a man for 5K ransom.
• 72 Comments on the E40 Video posting at WGCI

Top Shared Posts or Content

• 320 Shares for the 961 100K promotion posts
• 93 Shares for the unique shirt message below
• 87 Shares of the video from the band Otherwise's song We Are Soldiers 
• 66 Shares of the kids Zombie drawing.   

                                                                    You can see the LIKES moving up in many of the stations in the focus group here.  Project 961's contest to hit 100,000 LIKES has really pumped up their numbers and now they are giving away 10,000 to some one in that group of fans.  

You can also see some stations building quite an interactive following if you look at the "People Talking About This" figure on the 'home page' of the stations.   Perhaps us programmers can grasp this best as LIKES are the Cume here and People Talking is the TSL.   The leading station in inefficiency is KDWB with 107,000 Likes it draws a 15,948 People Talking number.   Compare that with Z100 in NYC with nearly 220,000 Likes and 2,972 people talking.   You can also see a pretty good ratio here at another Twin Cities outlet - KQRS with 29,267 Likes but 18% of them - 5,225 are talking about it.   The key to both stations is a healthy number of quality posts that get the audience talking/reacting most days. 

Next week we will be expanding the panel a little more with a couple of new stations in the mix.  

Thanks for stopping by.   

Facebook Radio Report Card 3/8/12

You can really see the growth in the audience reaction with more Likes, Comments and Shares on the posts from our Focus Group of 21 stations.  Looking over their posts during a 48 hour period this past week on 3/6 to 3/8 there were 179 posts that made our news feed.  That is a fairly average showing in the 2 months we've been keeping track.

Here is a breakdown of the post categories:

• Station Liners - 29 or 16%
• Contests - 15 or 8%
• Polls and Questions - 25 - 14%
• Pics, videos and links to stories - 75 or 42%
• Music News - 35 or 20%

The top 5 posts for most Likes: 

• Look how cheap gas was pic (below) - 961 likes
• Dad's takes over kids FB page and posts - 872 likes
• Wall Mart messes up cake - 668 likes
• Road signs explaining expressway lanes - 617 likes
• Girls painted bodies as Coors Cans - 548 Likes

Top 5 Posts for Comments:

• Immigrant Wins Lottery Court upholds prize - 590 Comments
• Lil Kim has no eyebrows - 510 Comments
• Graph of Birth Control pills needed for Sex (Rush joke) - 416 Comments
• Post a Caption for this dog pic - 290 Comments
• Jessica Simpson Pregnancy Pic - 189 Comments

Top Shared posts:

• Save Ward Hines (Steeler in Pittsburgh) 578 Shares
• Wall-Mart cake mistake - 381 Shares
• Cheap Gas (below) - 377 Shares
• Cliff from Cheers explains how beer kills brain cells pic - 304 Shares
• Road Signs explaining expressway lanes - 250 Shares

You can also see growth in overall fans with Likes at KISS in LA nearly at 200,000.  The audience is using Social Media more and more every week to interact with radio brands.  We've seen the top 'Like' posts hitting nearly double the numbers of 6 weeks ago.  The number of comments on the top posts are also more than double what they in early February.  Shares took a big jump this week and are now 4 times what they were for the top posts 6 weeks ago.   

There are also changes in Facebook that we need to keep track of with the Time Line for Brands now being introduced.   More on what that means to Radio Brand pages in a couple of days.