Social Media for Community Broadcasters: CBAA Conference

In this afternoon’s CBAA conference session on social media, Ryan Jones from Refuel Creative gave tips for community broadcasters on how to get the best from social media.

“The biggest barrier in success in social media for non profits is mental barrier,” he said.

“People say they don’t have enough time or experience, but it is really just in our minds. If you know how to work more efficiently with the resources you have you can be effective in social media.”

Community stations have a huge wealth of content, they just need to think about what is available and how to use it.

“After that, learn how and when to post, and what is the most efficient method, then find out what is and is not working. That will help you use content effectively and efficiently across different channels.”

Community broadcasters can get multiple pieces of content out of one show by blogging about what was on and who they interviewed.

“Articles on blogs and websites are independent of social media platforms, so they are the cornerstone of your online marketing. Publish interviews and show transcripts, preview the next show, that becomes several pieces of content that can then be shared.  When you have them on your site reading about your show you have the opportunity to ask them to donate or subscribe to your podcast. You can’t do that as effectively on social media because you don’t control that platform.”

Jones recommends blogs should be a minimum of 500 words to make it worth someone clicking on a link from social media and finding more information, but “it can be as long or short as needed,” he adds.

He also suggests to put a call to action at the end of your blog asking people to subscribe, donate or engage in another way.

“Transcriptions of parts of your show are very good material for your blog. Use automated transcription tools, which can help save you time. Text is also more searchable than audio, so people will be able to find your content more easily through search if you publish transcriptions of what someone said on air,” said Jones.

He also urged broadcasters to add videos or pictures when posting on social media because they are more effective than just text.

“You are generating this content anyway, so make the effort to share it widely,” he said.

Podcasts are “a no brainer option for radio stations,” he said, telling stations to “reuse the content you have already created to get the widest coverage for your audio.”

 

In the next session, which took the technical discussion further, Andrew Morris spoke to Richard Palmer and Richard Phelps about apps, smart speakers and streaming. 
 

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