6 Content Marketing Lessons From BBC Radio 1

Last weekend, Radio 1 held their now annual free music event, ‘One Big Weekend’. Held in Derry, Londonderry the event attached over 40,000 people and was held over three days, headlined by well known acts such as Biffy Clyro, Calvin Harris and Rita Ora. With 10.3 million daily listeners, Radio 1 is the UK’s third most listened to radio station  (Radio 2 is no 1 and Radio 4 no 2) and has a target age demographic of 15-29, although in 2008 the average listener was 33 years old. Recently, the BBC Trust ordered Radio 1 to appeal to more under 30′s which, give their target demographic of 15-29,  is a kind of no-brainer…

So how does this relate to great content. Well new music was the reason people used to relate to Radio 1, whereas now – new content is the new music.

Days Gone By…

Station controller Ben Cooper has realised that the ‘kids’ don’t listen to radios as much as they used to. When I was a teenybopper, much of our teen culture was influenced by music and its manifestation though popular media outlets.  So the girls would giggle at heart throb pictures of Backstreet Boys or 911 in Smash Hits, I would record Top of the Pops on VHS and then spend the majority of the following week replaying my grainy version of Hanson, I mean Aqua, I mean S Club I mean er, some cool band. Or I would be glued to the Top 40 chart show on a Sunday evening, finger hovering over the ‘record’ button of my radio cassette player, in anticipation of Babylon Zoo ‘Spaceman’ coming on.

If I wanted music, I had to ride my bike down to Woolies and buy whichever tape or later, CD, I wanted. And I had to save my money from washing dishes at the greasy spoon to do this. I didn’t have an iPhone with the ability to instantly download a Beyonce song for 79p. I couldn’t load up my browser and enjoy streaming a new band on Soundcloud or Bandcamp for free, sharing the link with friends if I thought it was any good. If you’d have mentioned Spotify I would have checked my face the mirror looking for evidence of pimples. The only music I listened to on a computer was the theme tune to Sonic or Alex Kid in Miracle World (good tunes). There was no ubiquitous, omnipresent supply of music at my beck and call. So as I say, if wanted to listen to a song I liked I had to jump on my bike and go buy it. Or wait until it played on the radio…

Radio 1 was where I heard songs for the first time.  It was where I felt a part of a community of other people that were also hearing songs for the first time. It was a hub of newness and excitement. My Walkman knew of no other FM frequency than 98.2. Walking to the bus, hidden in one ear during geography, on the bus back, in the kitchen when I returned home, on in the car when I got delivered to a friends house.

Future of Radio For Teens

Why Radio 1?

So if Soundcloud, Hype Machine, Bandcamp and Spotify, are the new places to listen to and discover music why listen to Radio 1? If Pitchfork and other blogs are going set the scene and tell me who I should be listening to, why listen to Radio 1? If i’m 15, then the internet and my phone are my connections to the world of new. Radio 1 may be on as background noise (probably because out-of-demographic dad put it on) but it’s the link to a band that my friend just reblogged on Tumblr that i’m concentrating on.

THIS is why Radio 1 is looking to content to place it back in the concentration zone of young people. One Big Weekend is an explosion of content. A plethora. A…er well a lot.

Localised Content

Each year the event is held in a different location within the UK. Last year it was Hackney in line with the London Olympics and this year it was in Derry, Londonderry. This helps Radio 1 to feel relevant to the youngsters in each region by featuring their city and the places they know in the multitude of photo and video content generated.

Exclusive Content

This is Radio 1′s event, put on by them for their listeners. With hundreds of bands and artists playing this gives Radio 1 opportunity to create a nice pile of content that they own and will be exclusively played on the station and via the Radio 1 website. I might be able to download my favourite Connor Maynard song from iTunes these days, but now Radio 1 has a 4 minute video online of Connor doing a mashup of a song with Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’. OMG I love Connor Maynard! So I now love Radio 1 a little bit more as they’re created this special moment for me and captured it on video!

Radio 1's One Big Weekend

Brand Partnerships / Affiliates

Ok so it doesn’t sound so cool when you call a musician a brand but this is in effect a scaled up version of a brand partnership. Affiliate marketing if you will. Radio 1 pay big bucks to Biffy Clyro, Vampire Weekend, Little Mix etc to have them play. Each of these bands then tells their huge fan bases how they’re so excited to be playing Radio 1′s Big Weekend… then shares links to the Radio 1 website of their performances. That’s a lot of traffic referrals. Little Mix alone have 1.5 million Facebook fans and over 3 million Twitter followers.

Content to Feed Multiple Platforms

The BBC is a many armed, content hungry monster. It has possibly the largest output and subsequest consumption of content in the world via TV, Radio and online. One Big Weekend fed all three of these platforms with all performances being recorded and shared on BBC Three, red button, the Radio 1 website, smartphones and of course various BBC Radio 1 shows.

Interactive / Social

Much of the content can be shared via social channels at the click of a button. More than that though, everything created is implicitly share-worthy,  given that the content features some of the best loved current music stars in the UK! The content has been shared via their Twitter, Facebook , Tumblr, Google+ and YouTube.

r1obw Google

Timely

The drip feeding of content began weeks before the event itself with announcements about the artists who would be performing, live shows from previous ‘Big Weekend’ locations, interviews with performers and ticket giveaways/competitions. After the event there were more interviews with artists, calls with listeners who attended and it seemed like every other song played this week was a live performance from the event.

More of The Same…

So I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot more of these content generating events from brands. Virgin do it with V Festival and then there’s the iTunes festival, the O2 Wireless Festival and probably many more besides.

Next up for the BBC, their ‘First truly digital Glastonbury coverage’… can’t wait.

Social Media – A definition by The Law Society

Everyone these days knows the term social media but do you know what they are? That’s right it is plural -’they’. Social media isn’t this one, huge, all encompassing THING. Social media is a collection of different platforms offering two way interactions.

This is how The Law Society in the UK defines social media:

What are social media?

Social media are web-based and mobile technologies that turn communication into active dialogue. There are many different types of social media channels, which attract specific audiences for different purposes. These include:

  • forums and comment spaces on information-based websites, for example BBC Have Your Say
  • social networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and LegalOnRamp
  • video and photo sharing websites such as Flickr and YouTube
  • weblogs, including corporate and personal blogs
  • micro-blogging sites such as Twitter
  • forums and discussion boards such as Yahoo! Groups or Google Groups
  • online wikis that allow collaborative information sharing such as Wikipedia
  • any other websites that allow individual users or companies to use simple publishing tools.

More here on The Law Society website

5 Quick Tips For A Better Facebook Brand Page

I don’t know about you but I read so many generic, copycat articles concerning  Facebook advice. Most mention such things as creating ‘engaging content’ and ‘entering in to a conversation’. All completely correct of course however I’ve heard social media ‘gurus’ touting the same thing for 6-7 years. No-one ever seems to have genuine tips – until now!

Facebook logo

I manage a brand page that has 50,000+ highly engaged fans so I just wanted to share some tips that come in handy for me on a daily basis:

1. Facebook Image Sizes

This is a balancing act between sharing high quality images and making sure that those images look as good as possible within Facebook. First of all, make sure that the image you start with is at least 2mb. Then use Photoshop or which ever software you prefer (Ifranview is a good, free image resizer) and reduce the pixel size of the image. Facebook images are 403×403 px but you don’t want to go down this small as when your fans open the image it stays too small. I usually reduce the image to around 600-700 px, keeping to ratio the same as the original. This way most of the image still gets displayed in people’s newsfeeds, but there’s still a little added value in them clicking to open up the full image.

ADDITIONAL: I’m told by Luke Williams (Social Media Coordinator at the RNLI) that he resizes to 843px to ensure images look ok when ‘featured’ on a timeline.

2. Promoted Posts

Facebook ads budget

Yes, these days we pay Facebook to get fans and we then have to pay Facebook for the majority of those fans to then hear what we’ve got to say. When you go to ‘promote’ a post, Facebook will give you a list of budgets to select. Now this is anecdotal, but try selecting the highest budget possible but STOP the promotion once it’s spent however much your actual budget is.  So you have £31 to spend, set it at £500 but then pause once you’ve spent £31. I find that this seems to hugely increases the ‘pool’ of people exposed to any single post, just don’t forget to stop the promotion.

(These are quick tips, there are lots of different methods for promoting your posts within the Facebook ad manager area.)

3. Respond & React

First came one way, broadcast messaging, then came ‘two way symmetrical’ (uh oh they’re answering back and talking to each other.) Now we have this situation where brands are sharing things with fans, who share things with their friends and fans are sharing things with brands. Brands need to then make sure they share these nuggets of insight around the wider business.

You need to keep a constantly close eye on the notifications/admin area of your page. For every person that says ‘me too’ or ‘love this’ etc etc you can show fans you heard them and you’re listening, by ‘liking’ their interactions with you. If they posted a justifiably negative comment, you need to look in to that too, gather more info, speak to customer services and offer to help. If it’s a compliment about the Swindon branch – pass that on the goddam Swindon branch (they’ll love you) and tell the fan you’ve done this. If a fan says how they hate the little bit on the packaging that always rips then pass this on to Johnny in innovation/NPD – it’s just what he wants to hear!

4. Facebook To Drive Other Channels

Ok so you spent 6 months just trying to get sign off on that Facebook advertising budget. You don’t HAVE to use that for building just your Facebook page, you can use it to cross-pollinate your social platforms! If you’ve just started your Pinterest account, you may have noticed that there is no Pinterest advertising. Same for Instagram.  Share a photo as part of a post and then expand on that image by creating a board of similar images on Pinterest. Link to this board “more over on our Pinterest page <link>”,  from your Facebook post and promote the post – voila a bunch of people wil now visit you on Pinterest and you’ll see that follower count increase. There are many other ways to get the most out of your Pinterest page…

5. Devil’s In The Detail

Just because Facebook generally allows for a casual, more informal tone of voice, this doesn’t mean you can allow the quality to drop. In fact, you may find that your Facebook fans, being the committed, passionate bunch they are will be very helpful and forthcoming in correcting any mistakes. Double check everything, then check it again. Then check the links. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t allow you to preview photos so set up a ‘test’ Facebook page to avoid sideways or pixelated photos. If you’re not sure how something’s spelled, look it up in the dictionary. Old school I know but useful to be able to cite the OED when you get in to the whole US vs UK spelling discussions…

Coke’s Meh New Website

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There’s been much online chatter recently with the newly launched Coca Cola website. The multinational has embraced the upcoming ‘brands as publishers‘ paradigm whole-heartedly with a magazine style homepage that pulls together relevant content in to one place. I imagine the internal pitch to senior execs went something like, “it’ll create a conversation hub, full of sticky content, increasing uniques and dwell time and putting our brand at the center of it all.”

Fantastic, a step in the right direction and surely the way forward for most brands in 2013.

The problem I have, is…it’s all a bit boring. Generic photos of vaguely happy people, that could have been taken from iStock. Philathropic content categories including ‘Health’, ‘Environment’ and ‘Sports’.

As a natural cynic, I think all this obviously has a whiff of diversionary tactics. “Let’s disguise the fact that we’re essentially a black, carbonated drink with 10 cubes of sugar per can.”

Put even if I cast my Mr Negative cap aside and view it from the perspective of Joe Bloggs/John Doe, I STILL don’t find it interesting/relevant/useful/sharable or any of those other things that make these things a success. As Adam Kmiec said on Twitter, “…as is, it seems to cater to what the digital marketing team wants to see”. 
To their credit, the moderators at Coke are encouraging conversation that may not always be 100% positive about their brand. blogger and owner of Traction, Adam Kleinberg was asked by Coke to be one of the first to give their opinion on the new site, via a blog style article featured on the Coca Cola homepage. Whilst Adam does say that the new site is ‘an amazing effort’ he suggests that it is a bit of a “scattershot “something for everyone” approach” and that “When Coke gets that content marketing is about really about putting the customer first, then I’ll really jump to my feet.

It gets a bit Catch 22/Chicken&Egg/dog chasing tail though when Coca Cola then respond to Adams post on their own site to which Adam then responds to Cokes response to his article on Coke’s site!

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Coke know what they’re doing when it comes to social media, as evidenced by 56 million Facebook fans and nearly 2 million Youtube views however I’m not sure they’ve got this quite right yet.

P.S. Awesome secret meta:
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