Radio can do online better! I know it can. I believe it can.

This is my personal exploration into how two industries I love can help each other out: radio & web.

Let’s get it going.

Twitter and Facebook are close cousins to radio. Each tweet or status update is a bit. If you use the same rules for a post that you do when the mic is on, things will be golden!

Who’s talking?

One of the most common questions I have when watching tweets and posts fly by is, Who is “I”? Some of the most important pieces of information are: The Station, The Time, and Who’s Talking. Lucky for you, the time and station are taken care of. So, we are left with wondering who’s posting.

Use some sort of signature in your tweets or Facebook page status updates. A common one is “^[Initials]“. Here’s an example: “It’s time for you and i to get a cuppa joe ^NK”.

Be You

Remember your own personality. Remember your Demographic.

You can find a way to shine in a minute, so how hard can it be to do in 140 characters? Try new things and be yourself. If you’re an oldies station, LOL’s or ’s won’t connect to your listeners.

Be Original

How many times a day do you or your station recycle stories and bits? Do you copy them word for word?

I’m hoping you raised your eyebrows and thought I was crazy for suggesting it… So why would your twitter feed be an exact duplicate of your facebook statuses?

The automation is difficult to do without – after all it means time. It’s easy to submit once and let it trickle through the web on thousands of platforms. But the repetition could mean less followers or fans. Think about it, if they know that facebook and twitter have the same content, then why would they follow both? It’s O.K. to have some duplication – but exact replicas?

The Tease

I’ve got more tips and tricks on how to set-up your Facebook page or twitter feed, to help. You’ll be seeing these posted over the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday I mentioned that when posting online, I’m always wondering who’s talking.

Today We’ll look specifically at what we can do with Facebook to make it easier.

Don’t have your on air talent as admins

Who ever is an admin, will post as the station, i.e. Mountain FM or ThePeak. Anytime an admin comments, or likes or posts, It will have the stations name and the stations image.

If you turn take them off the administrator list, and allow them to post to the wall as a fan, then it notifies fans immediately what station, and which announcer.

Some added bonus, is fan participation, and prettier pictures.

So how do you do it?

1. Goto your page manager
2. Click Edit Page
3. Edit Wall Settings
4. Change Default View for Wall to “Posts by Page and Fans”
5. And then make sure fans can post everything under the sun.

You have 10 or more people all tweeting away on a single account, but to those watching are wondering who’s the one clicking submit.

Yesterday we looked at facebook, and today is twitter.

It’s easy to add a quick signature to each post, i.e. “^NK”

But if I am a newer listener, or I’ve stumbled across you through a retweet, how am I going to decipher these signatures?

Stumble over to CBC Radio3’s twitter page, and you’ll see a great solution. Use the background image. It’s common practice to use the background image to post a logo in the corner, and putting a list of on air talent with their signatures makes it clear.

Remember, you don’t have the entire page.

Because computer screen sizes are different, and there is the twitter logo and tweets to fight against, I would keep the information in a 150px margin. And if you compare Radio 3’s background, I wouldn’t go any lower then theirs.

If you don’t know where that line is, then borrow the screenshot I took, and use that to judge. You may need to do a little back and forth until you get it right.

If you know of folks who have great twitter page backgrounds, drop a comment. I’m always curious to see them.