Engaging the Public in Public Radio
February 12, 2009 by Heather
Across the country — from Florida to California — public radio stations are feeling the economic squeeze. Listeners have less disposable income, so donations are down and programming cuts and layoffs are up.
This past weekend, Chris Brogan wrote a post about his local public radio affiliate — WBUR — and how it uses social media to engage listeners. Not just dabbling in social media, WBUR maintains a listener photo project on Flickr, plus an active presence on Twitter, Gather, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Utteri. The station even hosts tweetups!
This got us thinking: Can social media save public radio — or at least make it stronger? We decided to pose the question to Twitter. The poll may not be exactly statistically relevant, but we think the results are telling.
Two-thirds of respondents said their public radio station did not use social media. That’s almost shocking when you consider how much NPR itself has invested into social media.
[NPR] is asking all of its journalists to rethink their storytelling and audience interaction. Most news organizations are at least paying lip service to this multiplatform goal, but NPR is putting its money (and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s) where its mouth is: The foundation gave NPR $1.5 million to train its 450 editorial employees in digital storytelling skills and to pay for substitutes to fill in for them while they learn. NPR is putting an additional $1 million into the training.
As NPR VP for News Ellen Weiss put it, “We’re going to get our stories and our storytelling and our journalism out to people wherever they are and in whatever form they want to experience it.” Going back to our poll, 100% of respondents said they believed social media would help grow the listening audience. It’s safe to assume that more listeners equals more money, right? Then, why aren’t a greater number of public radio stations incorporating social media? The easy answer is a lack of resources, but that’s not a good response. (To the contrary, Coffee Grounz general manager JR Cohen told Shel Israel during a recent interview that the bad economy just means that “this is the time to be innovative.”)
So, what’s the hold-up for public radio affiliates?
NPR’s self-proclamed “social media guy” Andy Carvin explained to me (via Twitter) that “NPR has a wide range of social media activities, but the stations are all different since they’re all independent.” Carvin said WBUR, WOSU and KQED are good examples of stations that “get” social media.
Our local public radio affiliate, WMFE, has a talented pool of reporters. During the week, the station plays classical music all day, sandwiched by popular national programming. But, their online presence is non-existent, except for a basic web site. Listeners have zero opportunity to engage with the station or with reporters. Management doesn’t ask listeners for feedback. Social media doesn’t drive listeners to the radio station. Talk about a missed opportunity.
So, here’s what we suggest: Create a very active, very informative Facebook page. Get NASA expert Pat Duggins on engaged in Twitter (ADDED: He needs to be *conversing* more with listeners). Attend this month’s Orlando Tweetup and offer to host the next one. Blog (suggested topics include “a day in the life of” featuring a mix of onair talent and behind-the-scenes staff as well as the process of putting together a story). Let readers vote on stories, similar to Digg. Comment on other local blogs. Create a photo-sharing project on Flickr. Buy a Flip camera and create some videos. And that’s just for starters.
While public radio stations are non-profits, they’re vulnerable to many of the same challenges facing for-profit media organizations. Traditional media is losing ground to new media. That means public radio — like newspapers and magazines — has little choice but to embrace social media … or risk being left behind.
Is social media the answer to public radio’s woes?
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'); ?>Tags: NPR, public radio, Social Media
February 13th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Web producer here at WMFE.
Thanks for some awesome ideas! We do have a flickr account, our youtube account keeps getting more subscribers weekly and we just created a facebook fan page account. We are working on building an application in facebook too. We had two blogs but because of layoffs the programs are no longer here.
I believe that the good thing about social media is that it gets your stuff out to a mass number of audience. The bad thing is that currently there is no way to measure hits or clickthrough from them.
We are working on it and are engaging our reporters to do more social media stuff. Most of the bigger stations have more than one person in their web department so they are able to do a lot more online. Smaller stations have one or maybe two staff people working on this so that limits what we are able to do.
Again, thanks for the suggestions and will most def. try to implement them.
Maria Diestro
February 13th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Maria,
Thanks for reading! As a fan of public radio, I hope that WMFE can dedicate the resources to make a big social media push. It’s time intensive, but worth the effort. Once you really get into it, I think the station will be able to measure results. The results may be different than standard metrics, but the outcomes are nonetheless measurable.
I look forward to seeing how WMFE engages listeners via social media.
Heather
February 13th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Maria, I think it says a lot that you’re listening for conversations like this, and that you are willing to jump in and respond. I also think it’s great that you’re using Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and blogs.
The problem is, as a former WMFE member who still gets your e-newsletter, I had NO IDEA that the station was doing any of these things. Even looking at the homepage of the station’s website today, I still don’t see any mention of any of the sites you have mentioned. I have to wonder what the value is if you are not actively promoting your presence on these sites and using them to engage your current and prospective members.
There absolutely are ways to measure your success, too. Flickr, YouTube and Facebook all provide various measurement tools, and you should easily be able to use a service like Google Analytics to measure blog traffic.
Finally, finding ways to get more of your staff involved should take some of the burden off those one or two people that are trying to manage it all now. Heather is right, people want to hear from personalities like Pat Duggins. And once you get going, it’s amazing to watch how your audience will jump in and drive a lot of the discussion for you.
Thanks for diving in. I look forward to seeing how you use these tools to keep your audience updated. I’m a big fan of the station … in fact, I’m heading over to Facebook to confirm that now!
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 am
On Reddit.com this morning, the top rated story is, “Who listens to NPR as their primary radio source?” It’s been upvoted by 1,200+ people at this point.
Many of the people who commented referenced national NPR, but I think this reinforces the fact that local NPR affiliates do have interest from social media users. I’m glad our local affiliate is getting involved with FB, Flickr and YouTube, and I hope others take the plunge and get involved, as well.