Trying to figure out how to use Twitter? Here’s an example from Chicago’s Q101.
One buzzword that seems to have taken over Corporate America is “engagement.” “Let’s engage our customers in new and exciting ways.”
Sounds trite, and can also sound a little lame if you have no clue what engagement means to you – your company, your brand.
Q101 in Chicago, the alternative rock outlet that is part of the Emmis Communications empire, decided to use Twitter to ramp up engagement. And, dare I say, it’s pretty darn cool how they’re doing it.
It’s called “October on Demand,” and how it works is rather simple. Instead of relying on the old method of “give us a call and let us know what you want to hear and we’ll nod and say we’ll see what we can do…” they invite listeners to “tweet” a request. And they play the requests, at their discretion, but pretty darn often (at most hours of the day).
Advantage for you as the listener/tweeter is you can hear your song if you’re lucky.
Advantages for them, the radio station:
- They can better take the pulse of listeners. The phone has been replaced with a real live comment stream called Twitter. If there’s a mini-trend — if there are lots of requests for a song called Chelsea Dagger (because the Blackhawks are raising their Stanley Cup banner), well, they can capitalize on the trend.
- They interact with listeners through another channel. You tweet, they respond by Twitter, they play your song, they say who you are.
- Help with programming: it’s no secret that radio stations are being whacked upside the head by things like Pandora. The beauty of Pandora is the lack of a set playlist. Playing a song that might be buried in the archives somewhere allows a radio station to be more “iPodesque.”
What can you learn from this “engagement experiment?”
Well, it’s a multi-channel whipsaw effect, and one that might run counter to what you’d expect to hear from a radio station. Are there ways that your brand, your company, you can use new channels to engage? For instance:
Search. Even if you’re not selling anything online, should you be taking the pulse of your target market by finding out what they’re saying? Do a quick Twitter Search and type in a term that’s important to your company. Even if you’re not on Twitter already.
Stick with what makes sense for you. You don’t have to chase trends just because they are popular – if they don’t make sense for your industry. A Q101 Foursquare check-in won’t make much sense. Tied to an advertiser, MAYBE.
Have a conversation. If you follow Q101 on Twitter you’ll see that they are actually having conversations with people. You have conversations with people every day – if your target market is using new media like Twitter, you can always extend those conversations online.
Have at it!
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