Facebook Promotion Idea

From: John Paul. who oversees oversee the programming of Dial Global Radio Network's country formats and 600+ affiliate stations:

We have a format here at Dial Global Radio Networks called SAM "Simply About Music." Gary Thompson is the PD and came up with this promotion for one of our affiliates. It's great. This is from Mark Ramsey's BLOG.

There’s a SAM affiliate in Illinois that’s been with Dial Global for a couple years. Over the last year, the station had flattened out in the ratings. Earlier this year, we developed a plan to get some street buzz for the station. Like most stations they had no money for promotions. On Fridays instead of calling the station SAM, we rename it after a “facebook fan” that we select….its called FACEBOOK FAN FRIDAYS. We re-do new imaging for the station every Friday, calling it stuff like “Tina Smith-FM”. We run promos saying what we’re doing. We play up the fact that “all this great music is thanks to Tina”…and “if you see Tina today, thank her.” Turns out people like to hear their name on the radio ALL DAY, and end up telling their friends. The station’s Facebook friends have gone from a few hundred to a few thousand. And for whatever reasons, the ratings doubled in the last book. I’ve given this idea to other SAM’s, along with producing generic Facebook fan imaging for them.

Interesting tactic that’s less about gathering Facebook fans and more about generating some excitement and word-of-mouth out in audience-land.