Convergence of Radio and Social Media

Here are two great tidbits of info from Inside Radio. More proof that the convergence of Radio and Social Media can exponentially increase your brand awareness. Radio and Social Media combined is definately greater than the sum of its parts.

News and News Talk formats are natural fits with Social Media.

Inside Radio Deep Dive: Twitter in radio’s newsroom. What started out as a way to send a “short burst of inconsequential information” has become an indispensable tool in today’s news ecosystem. Twitter is helping media outlets not only distribute news but to track it down. Due to its speed, ease of use and soaring adoption rates, Twitter is among a growing number of platforms used in newsrooms to report breaking news or update a story. “A new battleground between news organizations has become email blasts and text alerts, yet Twitter is one of the fastest tools to disseminate breaking news information,” Bonneville all-news WTOP-FM, Washington (103.5) news director Mike McMearty says. “A ‘not guilty’ tweet from a courthouse can be sent to tens of thousands of subscribers in a matter of minutes.” CBS Radio all-news KCBS, San Francisco (740) has not one but four Twitter accounts. Twitter.com/kcbsnews serves as the main extension of the station’s all news brand, a place to tweet one-sentence stories and updates as they come in. Morning anchor Stan Bunger has his own account, where he retweets stories and posts his take on the news. KCBS also has separate Twitter accounts for weather and politics. “It’s a great way for the station to extend its brand and connect with listeners,” PD Ed Cavagnaro says. Like music stations, news outlets use Twitter to drive web site traffic and on-air listening. KCBS often puts a link in its tweet to a longer, more fleshed-out news story on its web site. It also uses Twitter, sparingly, to promote live news events carried on-air. In addition to breaking news, Clear Channel talkers “The Big One” WLW (700) and WKRC (550), Cincinnati use Twitter to encourage tune-in for specific topics. But social media in the newsroom comes with its challenges, including a learning curve for veteran reporters. “It’s a tough thing for some journalists to get used to,” consultant Gabe Hobbs says. “But it can be used as a two-way system, to get news out and to find out about news that is breaking.”

“Ignore social networking tools at your own peril.” Roughly a third (34%) of the public say they went online for news yesterday — on par with radio, and slightly higher than daily newspapers, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from June 8-28. When cell phones, email, social networks and podcasts are added in, 44% of Americans say they got news through one or more internet or mobile digital sources yesterday. One-in-five (19%) regularly (7%) or sometimes (12%) get news or news headlines through social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. By comparison, only 3% of the public regularly or sometimes gets news from Twitter. However, among users of each of these sites, there are fewer differences in news consumption. As many Twitter users say they regularly get tweets about the news as social networking users who regularly get news through social networking sites (17% vs. 16%). And Twitter users are more likely to follow news organizations or individual journalists; 24% of Twitter users do this compared with 16% of social networking users. Millennium’s Eric Scott believes stations that ignore social networking tools do so at their own peril. “People are using it to communicate with one another and they want to use it to communicate with you,” he says. “If you’re not using the tool that everyone else is using in your audience to communicate with one another, you’ll go the way of the dinosaur.”

Source: Inside Radio