The Complex World of Technology

We've all experienced it.  The cell phone that suddenly just shuts down, the computer that won't boot, the program that just died in the middle of an important task.  As we come up with more and more devices and more and more computer applications we may solve lots of problems or amaze ourselves but we also become more and more dependent on the ever increasing world of technology.  

Recently Steve Woznaik (the real inventor of the Apple computer) lamented that even he gets frustrated and concerned about the ever increasing role of computer driven technology in our lives.  His big concern - it all fails sooner or later.   Read more about his concerns here.

And if you want a few laughs (as if you needed any more from Steve after Dancing with the Stars) check out his recent cameo on Big Bang Theory.  




All hail to the Woz!

Grammys and Rock Music/Radio

There were a number of surprises in the Grammys from Arcade Fire winning LP of the year to Esperanza Spalding winning the best new artist, but the one resounding fact was the decline of Hard Rock and Active Rock music.   While the nominations and the results are not really a popular opinion poll in the Grammys (artists, producers and record company execs vote) there is a real message here and its not good for new rock music.

The musical spotlight from a sales, critics and Grammys reflection of this is clearly on 4 generes of music:

• Pop/CHR - And even here the lean is rhythmic. 
• Pop/Rap- When you have the Top Rap Artist (Eminem wins) placed in the prime time spot just before the top song and the top LP of the year you can see how important this genre has become.  
• Pop/Country - You can argue that Lady Antebellum is a pretty pop act - it was still in the Country arena.
• Indie Alt - Arcade Fire, Muse, and Mumford and Sons stole the show. 

Really the only 'traditional' rock moments came from Jagger singing a tribute to a Motown era artist and Bob Dylan with Mumford and Sons pretty much taking over his performance of Maggies Farm.  

Another 'blow' to guitar driven rock came this week from Guitar Hero where Activision announces that they are dropping the game.   The new hot game is Dance Central - a clearly pop and dance with the Kinect motion sensor. 

The message here is clear that Active Rock and traditional rock music in general is not even close to center stage.  If you look at the sales, downloads and other sources we can track the message isn't much different.  The library is still healthy, but the current Rock music scene is rather dark.   

The promised land for rock may lie in the Indie Rock world - not the Stadium Rock power cord world we often hear on today's rock stations.   

Facebook Fan Page Summary Thoughts

The last 'idea' for Facebook Fan pages is Contesting.  There are lots of options here.

• Prizes for becoming a Fan - Got a bunch of tickets to a show that you are not going to use on the air?  Hand them out to new Facebook Fans.  Got a bunch of discount coupons for lunches etc - hand them out to new fans.  Get Fans whenever you can.   
• Photo Contests - Even without prizes this can work well.  Having them post the 'snow photo of the day' or pics of them dressed for Halloween or maybe Mardi Gras.  
• Get into Facebook Games - This can be tricky, but take a look.  Games like Music Challenge might work for some formats like AC or Oldies.   Too bad they don't have this game set up for Alternative, Country, Hard Rock, Classic Rock, 80s etc.    
• Do face offs - Have 2 new songs to debut - link to the videos and the most 'likes' wins.  
• Tips for on-air contests - How about taking a High Low style contest and giving tips on the amounts on the fan page?  Ideas like this could help build fans.   

Summary Thoughts:  We covered a number of tips and steps to making your Facebook Fan Page a hit - here is a quick summary:   

• Basics: Make sure to have a plan with your staff about using the Fan pages, Promote it on the air consistently, keep a log of your postings and promotions to track growth, make sure your name and logo are easy to remember for the audience.    
• Build Fans: Use links, special fan greeting pages, on air promotion and get your fans to spread the news to their friends.  
• Stay Active: Post at least a couple of times a day.  You can overdo it here, but it's more likely that we will not keep as active as we could.  Posting 1-3 times a daypart is about right.  Also make sure that you have a 'big post' of the day that sort of cuts through all dayparts. 

Radio brand have a long ways to go in building friends.  Lots of stations have barely scratched the surface of their real cumes here.   Just make sure you have a good plan, some creative/fun tactics and the strength to execute it everyday.   

Facebook Fan Page Ideas Part 2

Once you have the basics down of an easy to remember address, a good Facebook friendly logo, a plan for pics with regular updating and a healthy system of daily posting it's time to try a few other tricks.

• Links - Yes you should link to your web site and any special show pages (Morning for example).  But, also go beyond - link to artists fan pages, local club/concerts, music reviews, and even cool products.  Getting your audience to link from your page will help you link up to more fans.  The more active the more action.   
• Pics - Invite tagging.  A while back Lenny Kravitz posted a pic of tons of fans at a concert and invited everyone to tag themselves.  Consider a similar tactic with concerts, local events, etc.   Also let the audience post pics and make it a game - remember the old Show Us Your Rock 97 contests where they painted houses, cars and cut fields with the logo.  How about a contest with them posting pics?  Make your pics interactive and get more action.   
• Link you stream - Make sure you link your stream and also look at any other cool audio links you can put in here.  Podcasts, cool bits, best of morning shows, etc.   
• Polls- If you can find FUN and meaningful polls use them.  But avoid the mundane here.  Too often we have polls that are not fun to participate in.   
• Badges - Make a badge for your station and your big personalities and invite fans to share them.  You can also award badges - maybe with some small prizes?
• Interact - The key with everything on your page is to get the audience to interact and watch it show up on their pages.  If you can attract their friends to check out your page you can really build your fan base and that will also help you build your brand and listening potential.   

Later in the week we'll wrap up the Facebook series with a summary and give you a potential action plan.   

Ideas for Your Fan Page Part 1

The Basics:  Some very simple points that many Facebook Fan pages seem to ignore:

• The Address - How do I find your page?  The addresses are often a bit hard to figure out. Especially when you have a brand like 'Kiss' where there are many of them out there.  Try to get a memorable address and also PROMOTE IT A TON ON THE AIR as well as on the web site.   
• Logo - The problem here is that your logo is really a 3X4 picture format on the top of the page and then in all your posts it ends up being cropped to a square format.  The trick here is to get your logo to fit in both formats.  
• Pics - Make them fun, interesting and current. Of often the pics don't look that inviting in radio pages. 
• Link your Stream - Let them dial you up from the fan page with a link.  There are a few stations that have developed Apps for facebook so you can invite the audience to link up their friends from their pages.  Surprised we only see the big internet only streamers using this for the most part.  
• Keep the Posts coming - You should have a status for every day and the air staff should have something on Facebook for every shift.  If you have a hot topic or big developments you can move to hourly contributions from the studio, but watch having a lot more than that.  The key is making it interesting- too many entries just to have entries and too many 'commercials' will hurt.  

The key to making the Wall happen is to set up a real team here that is all on the same page for the Wall  Think of it as if you just let the jocks play whatever - you'd probably end up with less focus and a real confusing product.  The same for the Wall - make sure everyone is together on the guideline for posts and that  you have a method to the madness.   Later in the week we'll look at more ideas including tab tools in Facebook you can add to get the facebookers more involved on your site.   

Tips and Ideas for Your Facebook Fan Pages

Building a real destination for your listeners on a Facebook Fan page is the marketing tool for 2011 and beyond.  We've already looked at the wide spread usage of Facebook and looked at the results from the dabbling we've done in the media.  It's pretty obvious that we need to have a healthy brand presence on Facebook just as we needed to have a station website 15 years ago.

The first step is building a Fan Page where you can gather the audience with their 'likes' and begin to interact with them.  Let's start by looking a few pages that really stand out:  

• First Red Bull : A very active page with over 14 million fans.  They have a pretty active Wall that is mostly controlled by them.  They also have Web TV, Games and a page dedicated to their athletes who endorse the product.    
• Nickleback: Not much here with just the Wikipedia bio on the band and little else.  No wall, no pics, no news on the band, no links to their music.  Gee they have a ways to go here - especially a band that is as plugged in as they are on the web and sporting a full time AOL/CBS artist streaming radio channel.  
• The Beatles: Apple Corps did a nice job with a basic page.  Good links to the music, a wall that has lots of interesting posts about Beatle stuff/artifacts, and with over 12 million fans. 
• 103.5 Kiss Chicago: A very active page with over 75,000 fans which is a lot in the radio world.  But not a lot here?  No ties to the artists or the music, no station events noted, not a lot of updated pics and the wall is pretty out of control here with lots of complaints about their new morning show.   

This should give you some ideas and tips and there are tons more pages to look at.  Over the next 10 days we'll look at 9 specific tips and ideas and some thoughts on developing an effective and comfortable Facebook Fan Page Plan for Radio Brands.  

What Excites Facebook Users?

This is a tough question because there is SO MUCH to look at and new opportunities/ideas are being developed every day.  At the core is DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS.  That is foundation for the whole site and has to be kept front and center to help build your brand on the media.  Really the core of radio promotions and brand marketing has always been about developing a strong relationship with the audience.  We've done it on the streets with promotions, over the air with our imaging, personality, and audience interaction, and we also do it through the music formats we build.

As we venture into Facebook we really don't know what works.  Should we be developing games, posting videos, tagging pics, telling jokes, showcasing artists we play, polling, running ads for clients, or letting the audience interact with us?  Maybe we should be doing all of this, but that's a pretty daunting task.  We need to look at what the audience wants in a radio brand relationship?

Maybe the place to start is by looking closely at the pages of your 'friends' or 'fans' on Facebook.  Now you can't access the pages of the people that just 'like' your page, but you can build a panel or 'focus group' of fans.  You can invite people to be 'super fans' of the station and 'friend' them on another site where you perhaps can offer some freebees or other incentives.  Here you can look at up to 1000 people and see what else they like, what topics and features they react to and also learn a little more about them.

Another trick here is to simply keep track of what you do on the page and what the reaction is.  Keep a daily log on a spread sheet and you'll see what moves the 'likes' up and what got the FB audience moving.   Here is a rough example that you can build on with your own tracking fields:

Now you have some data that you can track and see what moves the meter.  Yes it will add a few minutes to the daily Facebook ritual, but now you have some ideas of what is working.   Of course there are a lot of features and ideas to try on Facebook, we'll look at those in the next Blog.

Learning Way More About Facebook

The number of Facebook users world wide approaches 600 million as we enter 2011.  It's spanning nearly all demographics and audiences no doubt it is becoming a more important tool for radio stations than the web itself.  When you look at it you can do a lot more with just a few key strokes on a Facebook page than any web site from both the user and the host standpoint.

But as you take a big tour of the Facebook presence for many stations and personalities it's pretty obvious that we are just swinging away at any pitch here.  We don't know much about what the audience does with our Facebook pages, what draws them? what entertains them? what makes them interact with the product?

There is a starting place that every programmer, station IT person, the sales manager and general manager should spend some time with to get at least a grasp of the usage patterns for Facebook.  Take a look at Inside Facebook and you will find a lot of pretty interesting data.  Head to the Page Data and you can see what Facebook pages are gaining and losing views/fans everyday.  You can also look at nearly any page in the system to see the metrics.  You can also look at the games and apps pages for the same kind of data.  There are also blogs on the data, marketing conversations and a bunch of other topics also covered.  While the site is looking to market their data and also their Facebook Bible at least we have a starting point to sort of see the ratings here.

Scanning the rankings for the top Facebook pages radio is way down the list on 'Likes.'  Rush has the biggest site with nearly 700,000 but that ranks around 1,600.  Hot FM in Singapore has around 650,000 as the first music station.  In the U.S. guess who has the most - Z100 NYC - 108,000? or maybe Kiss in LA with only 28.600!! likes? - Kiss Chicago has nearly 3 times the numbers from LA with nearly 75,000.  But none of these big cuming CHRs come close to the U.S. Winner - K Love out of Santa Clara, CA - they have nearly 600,000 likes!! with a Christian format.

Really when you look down the ranks a lot of stations from all over the world in countries like Italy, Germany, Argentina, England, Philippines and even an Arabic station that is signing on this month all have way more likes than any music outlet from the U.S.  It looks like we have a lot to learn here.  Next time we'll look at some research ideas for Facebook after some more digging in the data.