Promotions Department: Subscribe, Follow and Like the Competition

If you are working in the promotions department of a radio station you know how important it is to keep updated on what the competition is doing. You should know what promotion your biggest competition is running and have a plan to outdo them. 

An easy way to do this is to get your competition to update you. Get updates sent to you, why go digging for information when they will send it to you? Subscribe to the competitions newsletters, tweets and Facebook posts. You may not want to do this from a station account for visibility reasons. If this is the case, 'like' or 'follow' from a private account, not one affiliated with the station. 

I know newsletters are becoming less popular methods of communicating, but I really encourage you to subscribe to one your competition produces (or a top station in your format). This can help you determine wether you want to invest your time in putting one together. I suggest trying it, if you can produce content that your listeners will value. 

Newsletters can be annoying. Plan the frequency of your newsletters (try to keep it weekly, bi-weekly or monthly) and stick to it. People will be more likely to subscribe if they know how often you are going to email them. Make sure you are tracking how many people are subscribing and unsubscribing can tell you what type of content is popular with your fans. If people are unsubscribing, try to determine why.

Or, just ask what type of content your audience wants. Ask in newsletters, tweets and Facebook posts for feedback. Try to make it as easy as possible. The fewer the steps, the more likely people will respond. At one station I worked at we attempted to have a listener feedback night, prizes and all. Not one person who responded would take part. But, listeners take the opportunity to voice their opinions in response to the post. In this case, people would post their thoughts openly on social media, rather than privately email them. It created a small discussion, but ultimately did not give the result we were looking for. 

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what we are doing that we forget see what other stations are doing. If you subscribe, 'follow' or 'like' other stations it takes almost all the work out of keeping up with them. The real challenge is outdoing them.