So, you host a talk show. You do your talk show, you call it a day, you prepare for your next day’s talk show and around and around you go.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Ah, never mind. Actually, there is.
I found it interesting in a recent staff meeting to find out that social media influencers were becoming bigger and bigger players in the local advertising market and were taking money away from what might be considered more traditional media, which of course would include radio.
As we came to the obvious conclusion of our meeting, radio has the original “influencer” with its hosts. Whether it’s a favorite talk personality or a favorite music DJ, they are personalities, and yes, influencers, who are there every morning, afternoon, or evening, in the lives of their listeners.
Reading an endorsement spot is being an “influencer” in trying to best convince your customers to purchase products or services from your loyal advertisers. It’s the same thing as an Instagram celebrity promoting his/her shoes, clothing, makeup and more.
So if we started looking at our personalities as influencers, what are we not doing that we should be doing?
The answer, especially in the News Talk world, is a more active social media presence. And that’s not just Twitter, which is a staple of many in the news space as it becomes the “hot take” medium to argue with those across the aisle. But a robust Facebook “fan page” for your audience to interact with you and your show after you are off the air, Instagram to potentially share a different side of your personality with other interests, social gatherings and more.
All of these three major social media platforms are not just great ways to keep the conversation constantly going with your audience, regardless of whether or not you are “on the air”, but also to build an audience and build a brand on these platforms, to entice and prove to advertisers that your reach extends beyond the radio.
In fact, if the industry put more of a premium on this, and we proved we could build our personalities’ social platforms, then we would be proving to agencies what we know to be true: we are the original influencers and we remain influencers.
We already have built-in audiences in the tens or hundreds of thousands, heck millions, depending on the market size, and should be leveraging those audiences as best we can to drive people to our social platforms to interact with the audiences beyond the radio. This will also help them keep our stations top of mind as an entertainment vehicle for them.
The key, and what will be the harder part, is selling and convincing the personalities to be super active on these platforms. The top social media influencers are who they are because they are consistent. They view their job as 24/7/365.
We need to make sure our personalities are feeling the same way as well. Posting sporadically will do nothing for building on other platforms or engagement with the audience.
There are no more “air shifts”. There is a personality for the brand. That’s the job. And the “air shift” is a component (admittedly the largest) of that.
The sooner we can convince ourselves to get out of that kind of thinking, the faster we can make the move into “radio personality” and “influencer” being synonymous once again.
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
