Best practices to kick start your brand

It seems like every day there is the latest and greatest social media tool to hit the market that you just have to use to grow your brand. Sure, some of them end up sticking around but when most staffs are spread thing to begin with (including my own) who has time to chase down the platform? You’ll make the profile, promote that you’re now on the platform and then try to maintain it on top of the other social media you’re already doing PLUS the other duties of your job?

I remember being told once my Program Director that yes, we do want to be where our listeners are, but what good is it to have a profile on every social platform if you’re not doing great work on all of them. It’s a point that has stuck with me. If you’re making boring content and just posting because your bosses say you need to post… who would want to follow or engage with you.

There are lots of ways to connect with the listeners outside of our traditional platform but I’m going to focus one two of the more personal ways Twitter and Blogging.

What are things that you can do to help increase the quality of your Twitter feed? Sharing cat photos all the time might not do the trick. However Professor Alfred Hermida does outline 10 of the best practices for Twitter:

The 10 best practices they identified are:

1. Have a voice that is credible and reliable, but also personal and human
2. Be generous in retweets and credit others
3. Link to external material rather than simply broadcast your own content
4. Listen and respond to others
5. Provide information that adds value
6. Seek out the views of users
7. Promote the most interesting and useful content for audiences
8. Use hashtags created by the Twitter community
9. Include multimedia with tweets
10. Link to other networks where a conversation is happening, such as Facebook

These are some of the key ways to engage your audience, make them part of the conversation and truly grow your station brand and your personal brand. It’s also for me one of the most entertaining parts of being on air is interacting with the listeners both during the show and throughout the day.

More great best practice advice from NJI Media

Blogging is something that radio personalities can use to share a little bit more of their personality and their likes/dislikes. For our station I blog about things in the community as well as in Country Music. It’s also an extension of the “Country Music News” segment that we have during the show each morning. Blogger Corey Eridon points out some things that can make it a little easier for you to get started and have the type of blog people want to read. She says successful bloggers read stuff that has nothing to do with their job because a variety of sources can help broaden your horizons. I think one of the pest points she makes is that successful bloggers don’t hide their personality which I think is really important to think about when you’re writing. We don’t hide our personality on-air. In fact the best on-air talent usually amplify their personality to 11 when on the air so why hide it in your blog?

Those are just a few of the many ways to make compelling content for your platforms. What do you do that is creative or unique? The challenge is to go out and engage your audience! You might be surprised what you find.