Social Media, it's not about platforms, it's about content..

This was the key message from our workshop on Social Media Strategy with Gina Bowes and Damien Mulley on 9th July 2013 in Dublin.  The workshop was attended by 16 people from a cross section of radio stations.  According to Bowes, stations must know their business objectives for social media before designing and developing their social media strategy.  Participants discussed the challenges they face in putting a social media srrategy together and those challenges included:

• resources,
• knowledge gaps,
• making content relevant,
• 3rd party websites,
• defining your brand and
• budget availability. 

In response to the challenges highlighted by participants, Bowes responded by indicating strongly that a successful social media startegy requires leadership, it requires one person to drive it in conjunction with a cross functional team within the station.  Bowes, advised stations to have a password policy and the passwords should be changed at least onece per month ans that a list of passwords should be kept in the station by one person. 
There are four pillars in a strageyg framerok and these include : 

• Operational Excellence
• Customer engagement
• Content and campaigns
• Channel selection

You must also have a content calendar and this should define how often you update your social media channels.  One person must take ownership fof the content calendar. Brainstorming is of huge importance when it comes to your content and stations should embrace this as a technique in order to come up with the most effective content for their channels.
'Content planning and scheduling is core to making anything happen and making it relevant', according to Bowes.  Think like you are on-air and 'think content first' and then look at platforms and where your audience is.  In conclusion, Bowes pointed out that you must know what your story is, know what you are measuring and finally you must have a plan to monitor it.  A key factor in making social media a success is to 'integrate it with the rest of your organisation'. 

Damien Mulley from Mulley Communications then discussed the technicalities of Facebook and Twitter and his starting comment was that 'Twitter is where all the growth is'.  In order to ensure your content is search optimised, you should install or have installed Google Analytics.  Mulley pointed out that stations should be aware of the rules around running competitions on Facebook and that developing Apps can assist with this.  He recommended that you should always push Facebook back to your website.  In contrast to Facebook, Mulley pointed out that there are hardly any rules with Twitter.  Stations should use Tweetreach to measure the impact of thier Tweets and to give this information to advertisers and this can show that Tweeting through the station has value for them. 

In conclusion Mulley pointed out that there is real opportunity for stations to become a complete Media Provider for clients and that stations should embrace this opportunity before it is too late. 

For more details on this workshop and future workshops email teresah@learningwaves.ie