In a workshop titled Socializing Sound at the Digital Broadcasting Symposium in Kuala Lumpur, AMT Managing Director and AsiaRadioToday editor Steve Ahern showed broadcasters tips and tricks for getting greater engagement from audiences by spreading their audio further through social media.
“Our audiences no longer just consume audio in linear form,” said Ahern. “They stop and start, rewind and time shift, they share, clip and mash up sound on social media. To take advantage of this changed consumer behaviour, we must push our content out on social media and offer ways for our audiences to quickly access and share what went to air.”
Ahern offered the following tips to broadcasters:
Use a social media tool such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to monitor your own feeds and also trending topics. Buy the professional version, and display the feeds on a tv monitor in a prominent place so that everyone in the station is aware of how your audience is engaging with you.
Turn your audience into your contributors and reporters. “Smartphones are in everyone’s pockets these days, the tools for recording, editing and sending audio are right there. Ask your audience to record sounds and send them to you, have fun with it, use the sounds they send you in quizzes, replay interviews they submit, involve them more in the program using these tricks. Audio is our medium, use it to its fullest with the help of your listeners, put it on social media and encourage them to share it.”
In your own tool kits you should have a good quality external mic to plug into your smartphone, such as those developed by Rode. “The weakest link in a smartphone is the built-in microphone, so as broadcasters we should strive for good quality audio by improving how we capture sound. In your phone tool kit you should also have capture and editing apps such as Wavepad or VoiceRecord to make editing and filing your audio easier.”
Track your social media analytics, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Most broadcasters are finding that social media posts with embedded audio or video, plus a brief quote about what happened and a picture, are working better than just promo messages.
Make it easy for listeners to retrieve and share your audio by using tools such as www.RewindRadio.com, where listeners can listen back, create a clip from your show and quickly share it.
There are three stages of production, before, during and after. Before going to air think about using social media for promotion and research. While you are on air, engage live with listeners on all platforms, share things you have just broadcast then close the loop and tell the listeners what comments you are getting on your social media channels. The show is no longer over once you leave the studio, social media never sleeps, so put systems in place to monitor and respond to your audience after the show finishes, it will help your content go viral.
