It was my first visit to the Sundance Channel, and I was met with this visual: Not so much a “pop up” per se as in invitation to deepen a relationship which was at least strong enough to bring me to the page in the first place (and it didn’t “pop” during my second visit). Does your radio brand have such an invitation? One that invites consumers to give up their email in exchange for information of real value? One that says “we want to connect with you personally”? I was struc

Why does a relatively small fraction of your audience “like” you on Facebook? Because, as Shama Kabani reminds us, you’re looking in the wrong mirror. Shama is a celebrated social media author, entrepreneur, and card-carrying member of the digerati (she is also a one-time interview subject on this blog). In a recent piece in Inc. she pointed out the one basic social media mistake that most businesses make:  People don’t use social media to connect with businesses–or even with

…or at least, not completely the right idea. Consider the study from the IPG Media Lab and YuMe.com which examined “advertising in the wild” to assess the effects of “viewer distraction” in a TV-viewing habitat of numerous gadgets and gizmos. One of the conclusions was that “smartphones are a persistent companion to video content.” As the authors of the book Social TV: How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile T

Although I quote my friend Seth Godin regularly, I rarely repost his thoughts in their entirety.  Today I am going to make an exception for a post which is, in every way, exceptional: Horizontal marketing isn’t a new idea.  But it is the new reality for just about every organization. Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media.

Here are the results of an unscientific and thus unrepresentative (but still revealing) poll from Inside Radio: Half say social networks a revenue-building bust. Facebook is fun and Twitter is a 140-character soapbox but when it comes to making money or contacts, half of Inside Radio readers say social networks haven’t done a thing to advance their career or promote their station. One person tells us, “Social networks, however necessary to what we now do, are an incredible ti

There are certain things repeated in the radio business more because they are repeated than because they are true.  Some things just sound good rolling off the tongue, so off the tongue they roll. One of those things is the expression: “Radio is the original social network.” I don’t know who patient zero was for this particular ailment but it has spread like a virus and now seems to be the thing we tell each other when we want to see heads nodding in agreement. Unfortunately,