The Infinite Dial

Most of you have email databases, and you regularly touch those databases with messaging about events, contests and promotions. How do you measure success with those efforts? In the early days of email marketing, we'd look at gross opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes. Social media has changed all of that, and as a result email marketing is far from dead-it is actually a potent activator for your own personal networks and the networks of your listeners.

One of the keys, as the smart folks at Blue Sky Factory have learned, is that the throwaway "Forward to a Friend" at the bottom of your email needs a subtle tweak. By changing that to "Share with your Network," and hooking it up with API's to share content from your email across social networks, your email database can suddenly develop exponentially more power. After all, you may forward something to a couple of people, but if you share something with your Facebook friends, or Twitter followers, then you've added a real force multiplier.

So you could potentially reach several times as many potential listeners (or site visitors) by activating your listeners' personal networks and encouraging them to share your content. With great power, however, comes great responsibility. That responsibility is to create shareworthy content, and that content is almost never about you or your station--it's about your listeners.

So what constitutes shareworthy content? Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal alerts us to this University of Pennsylvania study on the most-shared content at the New York Times. Turns out it wasn't the funny stuff, the entertainment news, or your Rock 105 Buzz Babe. No, it was content that created awe. The transmission of emotions, feelings that result in palpable changes in how people feel or perceive the universe, was the single most important factor in instigating content sharing.

Pretty tall order. It turns out that the best way to get this sort of content is to create it--and by that I mean literally create those awe-inspiring moments. Leaving deeper footprints. That means using your marketing and promotions budgets to help people, to create lasting change in your communities. Do that, and tell those stories, and your content will transcend your email database.

And you'll do some good in the process.