Are you building a community on Facebook or just spamming your P1's- Ken Anderson

There's been a lot of discussion on FTC about making the Facebook experience for your P1's a "one on one" experience.  To do this requires a great deal of time and smarts!  Don't leave the job to those who don't understand exactly how you want the brand to be portrayed and exactly how to be appropriate with listeners 1 on 1 on FB.

Real examples of pitfalls:

1. I worked for a station where the promotions department was in charge of Facebook posts.  Once an hour the post read like a poorly written liner card with a sell for the next station promotion or time to call in.  The posts were so frequent that the radio station became Facebook spam.  In addition, the promotions staff never responded to comments listeners would make on the posts.  

2. The jocks were employed with the duty of posting on Facebook once or more during their shift (at first it was once a hour!)  Without a clearly defined mission given to the staff, posts about "egg recalls", "alternative lifestyle meetings" and just random junk became the norm for the feed.  Why do I want my country music station Facebooking me about an egg recall?!

3. When those responsible for the posts do engage in 1 on 1 threads, they have to keep their cool.  The truth is Facebook is going to make us the most honest as is the nature of the internet, but flaming complainers on your radio station posts can't do anyone any good.  There is definitely a balance in what truths to acknowledge and which ones to ignore and it may be difficult for everyone on the staff to understand.

If it's your air talent (most likely) responsible for the posts, I suggest you have a detailed discussion on the following:

1. Posting content relevant to the life group and remembering that we are a Radio Station (Not CNN, Craiglist, The Insider, The Angry Women's Agenda Forum)

3. Writing posts as humanly real as possible like the personal posts on Facebook.  Humanizing the brand's stationality.

3. The balance between too many posts and not enough.  Each station may be different.

4. Handling complaint posts.  When to leave them and respond, when to delete them, when to take advantage of the rest of your P1's coming to your rescue!

5. The importance of replying to comments in a timely manner after you post.  Our airshifts just got WAY busier!

I do a nightly request show and spur it using Facebook.  We branded it "Pirate Radio" and as the comments on FB came in, our P1's embraced the "pirate lingo."   When it first started I was getting 75 comments per post per night, but as the word spread and the FB posters got to know each other, something amazing happened.  It became a real community, as real as any community can get on the internet.  Now the "community" logs between 350 and 700 posts per night and the posts stopped being about requests but more about interacting with each other because of the commonality they all shared - Our Brand!!  Talk for real to them and they will WANT to be connected to your brand.