Camii Whidborne

Your radio station can no longer afford to ignore Snapchat. It now has 158 million daily active users. It is the platform of the moment to reach a large and active audience. Your radio station should be actively working on engaging and recruiting listeners on Snapchat. Read on to find out why.

1. Share Original Content

Most radio stations are very good at staying active on social media, but they usually do this by posting or sharing other people’s content. They share memes and links and hope their listeners will engage with each post. However, reproducing used content does nothing to show a radio station or DJ’s personality.

The thing I love about Snapchat compared with other social media sites, is that it makes sharing other people’s content extremely difficult. Instead, it encourages sharing your own, original content. With Snapchat, you cannot share links and there are no likes, no shares and no comments. Just stories and messages to allow your station’s personality to shine through.

With Snapchat, your station needs to be sharing content often, because it expires in 24 hours, and this content needs to be fresh and exciting. Snapchat will allow you to share exclusive behind the scenes footage, which is the ultimate way to show how real you are. You can show off a slice of your station’s life without having to plan your content out. The content you share is exclusive and will encourage people to get involved with your station.

2. Front Page of Every User

Another great thing about Snapchat is that your Snaps do not tend to get lost in the masses of content. Because content expires every 24 hours and sharing other people’s content is not easy, there is a lot less content for the viewer to see.

Furthermore, Snapchat currently has no algorithm to make one account less visible or make other accounts more visible. Users currently see Stories from accounts they follow in chronological order. This means that your Stories will be visible no matter what and you will therefore get a higher amount of viewers. Plus, Snapchat users tend to click through each and every story that their contacts post so a vast majority of your active followers will see your Story.

3. Reach a Younger Audience

Ever since Facebook went mainstream, or ever since parents started using Facebook, young people have been leaving the platform one after the other. In fact, 30% of Snapchat users have claimed that they use the image messaging app because their parents don’t use it. If your radio station isn’t currently targeting a younger generation, you should at least consider it (Reminder: young people are the future, and those under 30 are the largest demographic in the United States).  If your radio station targets a younger demographic, or wants to start targeting younger people, Snapchat is your go to, with 71% of Snapchat users being under 34 years old. Furthermore, Snapchat is the only proven social media network that young people regularly use.

Snapchat will give your radio station a chance to have one-on-one, personal interactions with a younger audience. Start using Snapchat today and you will be ahead of other competing radio stations who have not yet considered this powerful social media platform.

Google has recently plunged into crisis after many brands have pulled their adverts from its platform. Brands’ campaigns appeared alongside extremist YouTube videos, essentially getting brands to contribute funds to hate preachers, racists as well as terrorist organisations. Brands to take down their adverts from Google include multinational companies, such as McDonald’s, HSBC, L’Oreal and Audi. The issue arises from Google’s use of automated ad placement, which uses a variety of algorithms to place adverts so the process rarely directly involves humans.

The size of the internet makes it very difficult for bodies to control and regulate every aspect of advertising. Even Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, has admitted that Google can never guarantee 100% safety for its brand partners. Radio, on the other hand, offers advertisers more control over ad placement and guarantees brand safety.

Advertising with radio stations guarantees that no extremists, hate groups or terrorists can appear alongside your adverts.

Radio gives you choice. You can choose where and when to place your ad, as well as how often. Bodies regulate radio stations so the cannot endorse hate, giving your brand guaranteed protection.

In the wake of the issue of whether Google is a safe environment for brands, commercial radio trade group Radiocentre has released a new marketing campaign. The campaign emphasises the fact that radio ensures a safe environment for advertisers as well as brand safety. It also highlights other benefits of advertising with radio, such as transparency and trust, where they mention that people trust radio more than any other medium.

Who will you trust with your advertising? pic.twitter.com/ypYrD3X0Mq

— Radiocentre (@Radiocentre) April 7, 2017

Know when and where your ads will play. Don’t be in the dark. #BeSafe pic.twitter.com/aMPfPkMC5s

— Radiocentre (@Radiocentre) April 3, 2017

Radio advertising is a safe option for brands; companies can maximise their reach, with the confidence of knowing who they are aligned with.

Digital radio in Hong Kong was introduced in 2010. Licenses were granted to public broadcaster RTHK in 2011 as well as three commercial operators. However, six years on, RTHK is now the only local operator providing services. Phoenix U Radio, Digital Broadcasting Corporation and Metro Broadcast Corporation all had their licences terminated.

Now, the government have decided to terminate all digital Radio transmissions in Hong Kong within six months. The Executive Council have deemed it unrealistic to only rely on RTHK to operate alone on the DAB platform or ask it to develop a bigger audience.

Unfortunately, the government did make any effort to make digital successful. They instead chose to shut it down, just 6 years after its launch. They may have spent HK$60 million to kick start the service but they did not make it mandatory for FM radio services to migrate to digital broadcasting. Furthermore, they could have provided incentives to get digital radio easily available to the public. For example, fitting new cars with digital radio. The government failed to make any effort, wasting HK$60 million.

The three commercial operators with a licence also did not make a big enough effort to make digital radio successful. They did not manage to nurture a sizeable audience. Instead of trying harder to get people listening to DAB, they just surrendered their licences. The commercial operators also put a big sum of money towards DAB; investing a combined HK$1 billion, which has also gone down the drain.

Digital radio provides better sound quality and transmits additional information for your radio to display (for example program information, news headlines, song titles etc.). Advanced digital radio sets allow you to pause live radio and record radio programs. DAB also allows for more stations and addresses analogue broadcasting limitations.

Unfortunately, a lack of effort from both the government and the commercial operation now means that people living in Hong Kong no longer have the opportunity to experience radio the way others do; with higher quality, advanced features and more choice.