The Today Network’s Jules Lund has been on the road over the last fortnight giving social media presentations to media agencies.

Despite a bad year for the network’s flagship station 2Day, Southern Cross Austereo has had success with other stations in the network, and, on top of its on air presence, the company has been very successful in its online engagement with audiences.

Jules Lund talked about social media engagement to a packed room at the recent CRA Conference, and Clive Dickens has been championing engagement heavily in his time with SCA (he leaves to join Channel 7 next year).

Lund speaks to radioinfo about his presentation and the importance of social media to broadcasters and clients. A summary of his comments to agencies is in the video below.

This presentation follows nicely from your presentation at the Radio Conference. How have you changed it for advertisers?

The focus for the radio conference was that Influencers and brand pages need to monetise. But for agencies and advertisers it was more about the benefits of using social Influencers to promote brands.
 
What was the reaction of agency staff to the presentation?

I get the impression they don’t often hear about how campaigns go from an influencers point of view, so they really valued hearing some of my case studies. And quite a few are interested in my side project which connects Brands with Social Influencers.
 
What are the top 3 points you thought were most important for them to hear.

1. The strangling of organic reach in 2014 is forcing everyone to consider monetising social
2. Biggest ‘cock-blocks’ to monetising are legal fears, wondering if it’s a betrayal of trust and the balance between content and commerce
3. The best way around these blocks is getting the correct Brand Match between brands and influencers.
 
In your presentation you refer to ‘thumb stopping’ content. What do you mean by that?

Most are viewing social content on mobiles, and there is so much noise out there that you need to really grab viewers attention so they don’t scroll past your post.
 
Is the 24/7 connection with the audience, that you talk about in the presentation, hard to sustain?

Yes it was originally an exciting idea but in the end it has created more mouths to feed, round the clock. I’m suggesting we shift the way we post, realising that people are looking to us for content, so we do it on our terms and treat it more like traditional TV/radio ie. post only when we have something to say, and pay to boost these posts.
 
Which commercial products are making money out of social media?

Many influencers are making money for themselves (Roxy Jacenko’s daughter, Indy Clinton etc) but when it comes to products, the industry seems to have stalled.

Smaller businesses are all over it, like friends of mine who have a coffee body scrub, they are paying social influencers to share and and killing it with exposure and sales.
 
How does SCA help advertisers to use social media?

We have 6 out of the top 10 most engaged Brand pages in Australia, and our 150+ digital natives live and breathe social, meaning they can access the most potential customers on social in Australia.
 
Any other thoughts from your conversations with agencies in the past few weeks?

The questions I have been hearing from agencies and advertisers confirms my thoughts: using influencers to spread a brand message on social has an incredible potential to be an incredibly effective form of advertising in 2015 and beyond.
 
You’ve developed a pretty high profile in this area. If SCA were to offer you the job that Clive Dickens is vacating, would you take it …. even if it meant you had to come off air?

I wish I had the broad experience Clive has, but no, I couldn’t fill his shoes. My passion is doing what I’m doing, helping Influencers and Brands work better together.
 
Now, on a completely different topic: what’s your take on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify?  How much of a threat are they to Radio and why?

In the same way that people were worried that YouTube would destroy TV and film, I don’t see any of these guys actually threatening Radio. SCA invests in content. And part owns Omny, where radio content is mixed with any music you like, including all the streaming services. So we are all partners in this exciting category.