How one of the UK’s biggest network of radio stations transformed their social presence to increase their social referrals by almost 250%.
How does a contemporary radio station successfully transition from traditional broadcaster to ‘publisher’, visible and relevant on mobile, and in Facebook news feeds?
That was the pressing question facing Bauer Media at the start of 2015.
The group owns some of the UK’s most recognizable media brands, from KISS, Magic, Absolute Radio and Heat Radio to the Bauer City Network, a multitude of contemporary radio stations in major towns and cities across the UK.
These regional radio stations – including the likes of Key 103 in Manchester, Radio City in Liverpool, and Glasgow’s Clyde 1 – all have young audiences who tune in for a blend of entertainment, popular new music, and topical news updates.
And in reaching a new audience online lay a problem. With the stations’ listeners now getting more of their of their daily information online rather than on-air, the Bauer stations risked becoming an also-ran in the battle for attention in time lines and news feeds.
But in just a matter of months, the Bauer group have managed to ramp up their presence on Facebook dramatically.
Since the launch of a new content strategy in April, total social referrals are up 249%. Mobile users, a key target area for Bauer, are up by 138%.
Overall, there’s been a 104% increase in unique users on the stations’ sites since the new approach was implemented.
How did they do it?
Fixing A Disjointed User Experience
“The issue we had was the user experience our audience was getting with our radio brands was a positive one, but it was ultimately individual and momentary. Whether you were listening to a brilliant on-air feature, or reading about a commercial deal on our social channels, the brand experience in reality felt slightly disjointed. There was no clear focal-point for the brand and in turn no real destination for the user,” explains Ali Wilkinson, Bauer’s Digital Content Manager.
Although they were all targeting the same audiences, in different cities, the stations lacked a unified social strategy, meaning that it was a case of trying a lot of different things, and seeing what stuck.
[bctt tweet=”‘It’s not about cramming all you’ve got into social.’ How @bauermedia grew social traffic by 249%!”]
“Frequently, we had moments of individual brilliance, when a post might get huge levels of engagement, and I think that, perhaps naively, we thought that was ok for social. When we dived a bit deeper, what we began to understand, was that this wasn’t building a lasting relationship between the individual users and our brands,” said Ali.
To properly connect with their audience on Facebook, Bauer decided that it was time for a rethink of their entire social strategy, in order to stay relevant and informative to an audience that was no longer always tuning in via radio, and faced more distractions and less attention.
The new strategy started with a week-long trial period in April, when Bauer’s new dedicated content team signed up for a Spike trial. The team were to use the platform to identify and post relevant stories to their stations’ hundreds of thousands of fans on Facebook.
“We decided to run a five day test and build a case study from it. We wanted to test out the processes that we thought would work and that was when our relationship with Spike initially started. We knew we wanted to put content at the heart of what we did online. We knew that had an opportunity to engage a much bigger digital audience than we currently did, and we knew that we wanted to start getting serious about content publishing”.
“We said, let’s see if we can build this brand as a destination for news and updates. Can we build a bridge between our brand’s website, and their thriving social community? We found that we absolutely could. When we talked more about what our local and national audiences were talking about, we got a really strong response,” says Ali.
Doubling Down On What Works
Based on the success of the short test, Bauer decided to roll the new strategy out across their entire regional network.
A new content and social trends team, based out of Bauer’s central London and Manchester offices, act as the real time co-ordinators of the group’s various Facebook pages. Using Spike to discover and track stories and other content that their audience would be interested in, the team find stories of national relevance, and posted them to Facebook with a new, more appropriate tone.
Occasionally, one of the team at the local stations chips in with a story of particular local relevance. The dedicated content team would be able reach audiences from all corners of the UK and beyond with relevant, timely information, all from the one room. The content team has constant access to Spike for content discovery and analysis, and collaborate using Slack. Google Analytics provide detailed on-site data in real time.
“Compelling, original and well-targeted content is encouraging more and more engagement and creating triple digit growth across almost every measure,” says Stuart Duncan, Bauer Radio’s Content Director. “Having Spike in our news-room has been a major contributor, allowing us to select and deliver the right story for the right audience and in a timely fashion.”
Using customised Spike panels, the team starts every morning seeing exactly what people have been talking about over the last few hours. The panels are focussed at the content areas that the audience is keen to hear about – entertainment and lifestyle, alongside topical UK and regional news stories from cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle. Sometimes that means a post about Justin Timberlake’s son, other times it means posting a video of Scotland’s First Minister pouring a pint in a Glasgow bar.
Access to Spike allows the Bauer team to tap into stories that interest their audience immediately. The Facebook pages of the various stations then allow Bauer’s content team to reach local audiences across the UK, with much less guesswork and content discovery time.
The results have been “beyond our wildest expectations,” says Ali. The numbers back up that description.
“Where we’re winning now is in the news feeds,” says Stuart. And with more and more analysis of data, the guesswork is playing less and less of a role every week.
[bctt tweet=”‘Where we’re winning now is the news feeds.’ How @bauermedia grew their social traffic by 249%!”]
“Overall I believe it’s far less about individual posts we publish and more about the holistic and consistent approach to creating and curating unique and original content that is driving the success of our strategy.” Based on news feed activity, their audiences seems to agree.
Watching the success of the new content strategy, Ali and the rest of the Bauer content team have learned a thing or two about how broadcasters can use social media to reach the right audiences.
His advice?
“We found it’s not about cramming everything you’ve got to offer into social. For us, we wanted to meet the audience on the platforms we knew they were using and offer them an exciting and entertaining brand experience.“
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