Radio and the New Media
I was on Radio 2 this afternoon talking to Stuart Maconie about Facebook and Social Media generally. Describing web2.0 in a sentence is quite tough…
Anyway in the segment it was revealled that Sally Traffic (the high priestess of travel) had a group. Now, it was quite a small one with just a few users, then by the end of the record loads more fans joined up. Now, that’s no great suprise as a drivetime on Radio 2 is a massive show with millions of listeners.
But for me it highlighted how when you engage with someone in an environment that they’re comfortable in (in this case users of Facebook), that you instantly reap the rewards. There were no web addresses given out, or links from Radio 2 online, just through informal discussion a load of people were activiated and they joined in.
Over the next 24 hours those people, through the newsfeed, will alert hundreds of other people (their friends) about Sally and Radio 2. They have endorsed it and told their friends about it.
Media is still often obsessed with control - it stems from the old relationship people had of ‘tuning in’. I think it’s actually more interesting to look at your objectives and think about how they can still be met (and targets beaten) if you cede away control and work to do interesting things within your audiences lives.