Twitter: What’s All The Buzz
March 13, 2009Everyone and their mother is on Twitter these days. From Newt Gingrich to Diddy and just about everyone in between is using this micro-blogging service to stay on top of technology. The problem is, very few people are using it correctly.
In order to fully realize the power of this new service, it is important to have some type of smart phone. I am not saying to run out and buy and IPhone tomorrow, but at some point you will need to be using a smart phone, everybody’s doing it. Using a smart phone to update Twitter on the go is the only way to remain relevant and truly leverage the power of the TWEET.
So, once you have a smart phone, here are a couple of ways to leverage the power of Twitter to actual help your station instead of using it as a promotional tool and turning off your followers.
1.) Saturday at the Mall: You’re spending your weekend doing a little shopping. You run into a pair of shoes that you really like, but they are pricey and you’re not sure if you want to spend the money on them and you need a little advice, but you’re all alone. What to do, what to do? Well, grab your smart phone and snap a picture of the shoes. Upload the picture and the price of the shoes to Twitter with a poll asking people what they think of the shoes and whether you should buy them. Invite your follower to tweet back their response. Once you’ve gotten a number of a responses, make your decision and make sure to tweet what you decided.
2.) New Music: New music discovery isn’t happening just on the radio anymore. People are discovering new music on their own left and right and they aren’t waiting for radio to tell them what’s hot, they are finding out on their own. Soooo…beat them to the punch. When you find a great new song you like and are thinking about adding to the playlist, don’t wait until your new music feature on the air, tweet about it now. Go find a link to the song and tweet that. Take a poll about the song. Give your audience a chance to interact with your decision making process about what music you’re going to be playing on the air. They want to be a part of the music discovery, so involve them in the conversation.
3.) Theater of the Mind: Theater of the Mind is dead. I know it’s an art form that many have mastered in radio and few want to let go of, but sadly it’s true. The IT Generation wants to see pictures of things, wants to watch video of it and read the story, soooo….give ‘em what they want. When you get the inside track and a backstage pass to one of the hottest shows of the year, don’t just talk about it on the air and paint the picture, share the pictures. Take snapshots of your every move and tweet them for your audience. Make sure you tell them what each picture is and why you took it. If your smart phone takes video, utilize a site called 12seconds.tv which integrates itself nicely into Twitter and take video of what’s happening. Tweet about what food is being served backstage, which artists you’ve run into, who was cool, if there were any groupies, everything that your audience wants to know about and include pictures, because trust me, they WANT to see the action.
When MSNBC uses Twitter, they use it like a news organization. It’s bland and boring. I’ll give them credit for trying, but it’s just not what the service is made for. The point is, here is a new, exciting tool that has a lot of buzz right now. In order to take advantage of it, you have to use it correctly. It’s not enough to just say you have twitter and that your audience should follow you, you have to engage them in order to gain their trust that you’re using it because you like to and not because you think you “should” because that’s what all the “kids” are doing.
And now…a cheap plug…for an on-going discussion on the best ways to utilize Twitter for your station, follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/cdm19
