It’s one of the toughest problems facing any of us in the audio space: How do we leverage social media to spread our actual audio content? This problem is made tougher by the fact that various social media platforms are all in on video and images, but not so much all in on audio. There are a number of platforms available today that attempt to solve that problem and give your audio a chance to go viral. One of my favorites is WAVVE. In this video I’m touring the brand new vers

During this week of Thanksgiving (and in the spirit of giving thanks), I wanted to share with you one of the most important conversations from the 2016 hivio audio future festival. If you’re a radio broadcaster, this will change the way you view contesting forever. Ryan Cummins is the Co-Founder/Co-CEO of Omaze, a cause marketplace that raises money and awareness for charity by offering the chance to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Many of my clients know I’m a huge fan o

Recently I was working on a project for a cable TV network involving digital content. They had only one rule: No audio, no way, no how. Why? Mostly because of their belief that of all the digital content elements they could present – text, images, video – the one that is least likely to be shared is audio. And the less the content is shared, the less impact it will have, and the less tune-in potential to their TV content they will see. In TV, as in radio, it’s all about ratin

If you’re trying to grow radio ad revenue (or ad revenue from any audio or video platform), you should watch this presentation from Veritone Media’s Ryan Steelberg.  It will change forever your sense of what you can sell and how you can sell it. Ryan was one of the speakers at hivio 2016. And if you’re trying to spread your content across platforms (and who isn’t?), this video is for you, too. Veritone Media’s big data solution ingests and indexes all of your content, and tha

hivio – the audio future festival – begins THURSDAY at 1pm SHARP, and you can watch the whole thing stream LIVE. This is the only live-streaming event designed to reveal the future of the audio information and entertainment industry. If you can’t be in the room with us, then you should watch from work or home. And onstage we have interviews with and presentations from the movers and shakers in the space, including: Anya Grundmann, NPR VP Programming & Audience Development – t

Will media unicorns go extinct? And… Are platform businesses eating the world? It’s episode 37 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Plus, rants and raves on Kanye West, a great podcast for X-Files fans, and the most effective Super Bowl ad – which wasn’t even an ad. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button below: And if you’re reading this by email, click here for the audio. For show notes

Have you checked out the Media Unplugged podcast I do with Tom Asacker? If not, the holiday season is a great time to catch up. Just go here for the iTunes link (other links are below). We reveal what’s really happening in media. And so far, the ‘cast has been good enough to be distributed by Media Village, NetNewsCheck, the prestigious American Marketing Association, and more. Maybe you’re missing something! About this new episode (the last of 2015): Meet your new cable comp

If you’re in the TV business, you’re familiar with the UpFronts. That’s the annual dog and pony show put on by the networks to debut their new shows and to impress and dazzle advertisers and media. On the digital side, we have the more recent NewFronts. Sponsored by the IAB, this event features 20 or more companies in the digital video space, including Google, Yahoo, Hulu, and others. And as of this month we finally have some equivalent events in the audio space. And for the

What does Facebook’s aggressive move into video mean for their future? And YouTube’s? Also: It’s a trend – publishers as platforms, where fans make content but publishers make bank. It’s episode 10 of Media Unplugged with branding authority Tom Asacker and media strategist Mark Ramsey. Listen as we go inside media to reveal the ugly truth! Click the play button below. And if you’re reading this by email, click here for the audio. For show notes go to the Media Unplugged site.

I have long argued that radio broadcasters demand too little of their mobile apps. Yes, they can stream the over-the-air content. But so can your radio. What else can they do? What about your app is so essential, so engaging, such an important complement to the over-the-air and streaming experience that it demands not only that I download it, but that I also use it on a regular basis? That’s why I like the Clip Interactive platform so much (I have featured them before in this

If all your favorite audio content is all over the place in a variety of different channels, why can’t you aggregate it all in one place? Well, now you can! J.D. Heilprin is founder of AGOGO, a stealthy mobile-first startup that was recently featured in the iTunes store as “best new app” and “top news app.” Much more than aggregating podcasts, AGOGO is a platform bringing together a world of audio (and the audio form of TV and textual media content made audio) in one place, a

This past week I had a conversation with someone knowledgeable in the auto technology space: “The dash is getting crowded and complicated,” she argued, “and the harder to find a radio station is the less apt folks will be to listen to it.” “But if the content is compelling enough, they will seek it out,” I replied. “Ease of use trumps compelling content,” she argued back. “It has to be easy to find and use first, and some of these new dashboards don’t even have an FM/AM butto

By now you’ve heard about Apple’s new CarPlay platform which is gearing up for battle with Google’s Open Automotive Alliance, not to mention all the other platforms making a land grab for that whitest of spaces, the car dashboard. The Apple platform – coming soon – will only be available on a few new car models and will be integrated with only the newest iPhone models and features only a few non-Apple app partners (notably excluding Pandora). But this is how change comes, one

Why did ESPN acquire Nate Silver and his hugely popular NYT blog FiveThirtyEight.com? Was it just to lay odds on sports events? Or was it for a much bigger play? This past weekend on CNN’s Reliable Sources, ESPN Chief John Skipper spelled out the strategy: …We had launched Grantland, [where we] allowed Bill Simmons to have the freedom to do the kind of site he’s doing so that when we went to Nate and said we’re going to let you range across things other than sports, we’re goi

There’s this assumption in digital-land that everybody wants to “engage.”  That “engagement” is the ultimate goal of all digital activities. So then why is there so little “engagement” with most radio brands online? Is it because radio brands are poorly represented on digital platforms?  Or is it because most (but certainly not all) listeners use radio not because it occupies their every moment of conscious thought, but precisely because it doesn’t? The answer is certainly “b

Here  are four key things that will instantly improve your station’s website: Stuff that’s compelling (no, I mean compelling) Bite-size content Content that’s easy to share Track back to the platform And by “improve” I mean make it more relevant, more popular, more effective, and ultimately more profitable, directly or indirectly. Watch this short video where I explain all four in more detail: Prefer audio?  Try this: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is req

“We’re doing a better job at selling what we have online than having content online worth selling.” That sums up the comment one of radio’s leaders made to me recently.  And it leads to the obvious question:  Given the tremendous reach of radio why don’t more folks visit our digital assets? In this picture, I show the uniques (i.e., cume) for one major broadcaster’s 24 most popular station sites for the month of September.  Every one of these sites is attached to a reasonably