Radio Industry and Facebook - Phenom or Failure?

New Media Analytics and Metrics for the Radio Industry

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AG News: 5/21/2010

Lately, the "social media" cry has grown louder within the radio industry. It appears that hundreds of radio stations are placing Facebook icons on the home page; for what purpose I am only beginning to understand. I am no social media expert. Over the past few years, if I needed answers to the relativity between social media and a web site's visitor I'd turn to a youthful person who was actively involved.

Times change, and my activity in one area has recently led me to learn more about the interaction created by - for this demonstration - the Facebook crowd.

With all the press being given to radio's use of social media I did a little digging to see how the industry is faring with sixteen radio station Facebook pages, did some reading to catch up on a recent change at FB (turning a "Fan" into a "Like"), and I spoke with a couple of folks who use the service. What I uncovered has not given me enough information to draw any conclusion. It has, though, made me ask a few more questions like "are the resources used for social media within a radio station's online activity worth the response it gets?" and "what is it, exactly, that quantifies a 'successful' Facebook page?"

There's an explanation which needs to occur here. Facebook has replaced the word "Fan" on its pages with the work "Like." Until now, as I understand, a "Fan" was similar to a radio P1 listener - a person who associated with, and would devote more time than the average person interacting with the station. By switching to the word "Like," allowing a Facebook visitor to give a "thumbs up" to individual comments, FB has, in the opinion of articles I've read, not changed the underlying mechanics of the system but it will increase the numbers of persons clicking on the "Like" button - in part, due to confusion of the term. Read more here.

This "Fan" and "Like" is an unscientific way to gauge a radio station's Facebook page popularity, though it remains the way most people I've spoken with determine a Facebook page's worth. So, let's go with it in this case.

As of this morning, here is a breakout of radio station web site Facebook page Fans or, as it's now known, "Likes." These radio station web sites were selected at random, after visiting approximately twice the number of radio sites (about half had no Facebook link). Does this mean that half of the radio industry is participating in Facebook? That's an answer we don't have, but we'll move on to the numbers from stations that do have a Facebook page because these numbers represent a comparison against the population of each market (source: US Census). Note that the market population does not include the ADI, only the city of license; which pushes the "percentage of Population as Like/Fan" lower.

Number of Like/Fan

Market Population

% of Population as Like/Fan

Station

Format

Market

Station URL - click

Facebook URL - click

1,643

270,789

0.61%

WBUL 98.1 The Bull

Country

Lexington, KY