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How The Internet Has Made Listeners Like Goldfish
Let’s face it we are assaulted with information from every angle seemingly non-stop. 24- 7. Erik Logan (now President Of Harpo Productions) once wrote in his programming philosophy that a radio station’s main competition wasn’t the format competitor, but rather everything else around us, kids in the car, billboards, phone calls and the internet, and that was before Twitter, Facebook and all else the internet brings us. Stations have learned to embrace the technology to further engage listeners, but how has it changed us and what can we learn from it?
This continuous stream of information has actually begun to change our brains; we think quicker and are distracted easier. Pre internet, the average person’s attention span was thought to be about 20 minutes, growing longer from childhood to 20 minutes around age 20. According to the BBC “The addictive nature of web browsing can leave you with an attention span of nine seconds.” Nine seconds, that what some say is the attention span of a gold fish. It’s also the length of a good into to talk over and about the time it takes to read the average Facebook post or tweet. 
So what do we learn? Just to be quicker? It’s much more then that. We must learn to be compelling in that short time frame, crafting a meaningful, fascinating first sentence. If you are doing 20 to 30 second break, you must capture your audience in the length of a tweet or they will be gone. The good news is we get to practice this across many platforms. It does not just relate to breaks but to Twitter, Facebook and other social media. In this distracting environment you must be immediately captivating. No matter what media you are using to engage your listeners (or followers) message cannot be an afterthought. Craft your message to engage the goldfish and you will win by being heard.
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They say there is nothing new when it comes to radio promotions; it’s all been done before, stolen and repackaged. There is a lot of that, but now more then ever creativity is a must. Fresh ideas to compliment social media, modular marketing (texting) and web initiatives are vital. For 16 years I spent most of my days, and many of my nights creating new contests and promotional ideas as a radio programmer. I adapted and evolved helping to lead the charge in the texting initiative within Citadel Broadcasting. Now much of the focus is on social media and how to use it best. Some of it takes a computer geek to figure out, yet one thing still persists. The need to find creative ways to use these new promotional and branding tools to engage the listener.
When I started, most promotions were simple on air contest, some stolen others truly original. As my career developed I started to move ahead of the curve when it came to new ideas and technology. Look at 1067 Coolpop, way to hip for the room seven years ago, now the basis for many Hot AC hybrids. The point, I was never afraid to try, even if it meant failure. I’m proud of that, as it is a trait of great innovators. Take Thomas Edison, how many times did he fail before the light bulb worked? Hundreds even thousands of times by some accounts, but he never gave up on his creative endeavors. Now just slightly distanced from radio as a record rep, I see some great promotions and branding. Some of these are on air while others utilizing new technologies. And I find it is still in my blood. In this blog I’ll share the best of what I come across, and innovative ways that I see to use technology for promotion and branding. It will all be here to make you look like a genius, and all you have to do is steal it!
First up easier ways for your listeners to follow you, check in at your events and contact you.
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