The Infinite Dial

Opinion Research Corporation just came out with a study of the sources consumers trust for buying information. At the top of the list, chosen by 59% of respondents, was personal advice from friends and family (NOT social network "friends," who appear well down the list). TV News or other broadcasts were chosen by 40%, search engines at 39% (and growing) and radio came in at 20%, just behind direct mail. Messages or posts on social media sites were near the bottom, chosen by 18 percent (but significantly higher on the younger end, as you might imagine.)

Thinking in silos leads you to believe that this is yet another study diminishing the importance of radio. But, as this blog has made the case for many times in the past, you aren't in a silo. You may not have a TV station, but you have every right to search traffic, online ads, message boards and many other channels. What the connected digital economy of 2010 is teaching us that the right answer to what to try, is "everything." I see very little, if any, content marketing done online by radio stations--but an article about a local business or service is a clear opportunity to upsell a client, and another line in the water to attract a prospective customer to your client's door via search.

There simply isn't enough content on the majority of radio station websites to be interesting enough for humans--let alone search engine spiders--and the key to almost all of these potential fishing lines in the water is text content--whether that content is distributed on social networking sites, your station's blog, article marketing or in metadata wrapped around your online audio and video offerings. Without putting the creation of text content at the forefront of your digital strategy, you're needlessly playing in one silo--when you could be playing in the whole barnyard.