Not having dedicated person doing social media will hurt your brand on social media.

Mistakes radio stations do on social media — (2) not having dedicated person for social media.

Now days it is hard to find someone who is not doing social media.

And just because anyone can be there, and everyone is, it doesn’t meant that everyone is good at it.

So it is easy to assume that everyone can do it.

On every radio station there is usually one person that is little bit geeky. Ahead of the curve. And he will push station to open page, or have Instagram account. Maybe even be on Snapchat.

On other stations, you will start doing it because the competition is doing something.

Both reasons are real world inspired, and both are wrong.

You should be on those social media platforms where your audience is. And you should use it to further connect with them even when they are not listening. And give them reasons to tune in.

Social media can be great platform to market your brand and reach your audience wherever they are. But it is too easy to misuse it.

Because everyone is doing social media, we assume that everyone can do it, and that it is easy.

Two things usually happen — you either have some intern do it with no supervision, or you give tasks to current staff to update your social media as they fit. Or, in worst case, as something happens on air.

There are (at least) four huge things wrong with this:

(1) If something was interesting on air, doesn’t mean it will work on line

What you do on air is native content for radio. Cutting audio, posting it on sound cloud and linking to Facebook will not make people listen to it.

Or topic that you do on air — and just asking the same question on Twitter, if it is out of context — it will not work.

What happens on air — is there at that time. What happens online, can sometimes live for some time. So, the content you do for social media platforms, needs to be native.

And, usually, things that are posted are not even ones that are interested on air, but because we have to have something on line.

(2) If you have Facebook account, or Snapchat, you know how to use it for business

Everything you do needs to have “why”. How it fits in overall strategy. Just doing stuff that you feel good about is not good enough.

It has to benefit you in some way. So, person you chose to do your social media needs to understand this. Have a plan.

What is the big picture? Where is your return on investment when it comes to social media? What is the metrics you monitor?

No plan = no execution!

(3) It is not real job, it is easy and doesn’t take much time

This is usually reason to dismiss need for new people and just assign these tasks to current people.

You need consistency in both quantity of content and quality and here you don’t get either. Everyone is doing what they think is best. Nobody is responsible. Nothing is monitored.

And then it is easy to say that all this is just fad.

(4) Nobody is accountable

This is new world. Where everyone can reach you directly. As a brand if you don’t reply you might have died in their eyes.

If anything is important is this — if someone makes step to contact you — and you don’t reply — you failed.

What do do?

As person who is running station get involved. If you are program director, you can’t not know at least something.

You don’t need to be expert, but some basics are needed so that people can’t fool you.

Work on plan. What you publish, and what types of content you publish. When you publish.

There is huge opportunity to get best of your content, to make your brand visual also (think logo in front of potential listeners, think video) if you execute right.