by Scott Howard | Jul 11, 2023 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Let’s jump into this topic headfirst with the reason I’m talking about this subject right now.
Around July 5th, a new social media app, Threads was launched and it’s been all over the news because… well.. the news media thinks it’s newsworthy.
Threads is connected to Instagram which is connected to Facebook which actually changed their corporate name to Meta in 2021. Sort of like when Google changes their corporate name to Alphabet in 2015.
Anyway back to Threads and the news it’s making, mostly because of the number of users or subscribers it’s signed up. News reports proclaiming it’s breaking records compared to other social media apps are true but with a footnote.
Facebook or Meta or whatever you want to call it is still the worlds largest social media platform when you count the number of accounts or users they have. However if you look under the hood and ask some reasonable questions like “how many active users?” and “how active does an account need to be to be considered active?” , those numbers will shrink. More on that in a moment.
The reason Threads has gained so many subscribers so quickly is because of two things:
- The Hype. Free advertising from the media. Because when Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making changes in 2022 that disrupted the Twitterverse, many Tweeps from the old days were not happy and looking for a Twitter Alternative.
- The Facebook/Instagram subscriber database. If you have an Instagram account, you can sign up for Threads in less than a minute because Threads is currently tied directly to Instagram. As of March 2023, Instagram has 2 Billion Monthly Average Users. That’s made it easy to pull those people over to Threads. Twitter only had 233 MAU in March and as I write this just 5 days after the Threads launch, over 100 million have created a Threads account.
Regarding Threads, Is It A Thing or Is It A Fad?
Honestly it’s way too early to tell.
I recall in 2009 when the program director of one of my radio stations proclaimed that Twitter was just a Fad. This was 3 years after Twitter launched and a year after I hopped on as a Tweep and built my ScLoHo Brand to national recognition with some of my Tweets being quoted by mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal along with some more niche platforms.
The real test will be as the year unfolds and next year too. Right now people are signing up because they’ve heard about it and it’s easy. But are they going to be active on Threads? We have to wait and see over time.
There are some limits to the functionality compared to Twitter and other social platforms and that will evolve with time. I’ve seen my friend Kevin Mullett and others explain the pros and cons of Threads. Scroll thru the Facebook comments until you find Kevin Mullett here: https://www.facebook.com/djtrend/posts/pfbid02A7eh8tYxLLhcc1vmhf7xxfzLpzYXyQRU12swiuXTjTsc2JD6cro9V3DBP9ZCE9GVl
Also my friend Anthony Juliano had a very common sense approach that he shared on LinkedIn this week. Anthony wrote:
My take on Threads, in a nutshell:
1. Yes, it’s a thing
2. A lot of people are joining it
3. But you don’t have to
4. Unless you want to
5. Oh, I understand: new stuff is neat!
6. But it probably won’t change your life, and
7. Do you really need another distraction?
8. It’s okay if you do, though, or see it as something that will move you toward your goals
9. But it’s okay if you don’t
10. And you can always change your mind later. To join or unjoin Threads. Or anything else. These tools aren’t going anywhere, and if they do you didn’t miss anything.
Except that last point #10 .. you can’t unjoin Threads without deleting your Instagram account right now. However, you can decide not to participate and simply keep your account without using it.
If you are an early adopter like I used to be and Kevin still is, go exploring on Threads.
But for marketing your business the way some people have relied solely on Social Media platforms to be the lifeline of revenue for their income… hold off. At this moment Threads doesn’t have a way to run sponsored content, but they will in order to survive.
Because not all social media platforms last, no matter how much money the parent company has. Google has failed numerous times including their Google Plus social platform that they simply could not convince enough people to use and it was killed off.
One last thought on the counting process of users or subscribers. Monthly Average Users seems to be a standard for many including the social media world. Monthly is also number that is used in the radio broadcasting world. The Radio Advertising Bureau says that over 90% of Americans listen to radio at least once a month.
I can give you real numbers that are much better criteria to look at when deciding where to spend your ad and marketing money.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Nielsen company does a survey twice a year that gives us weekly numbers, not monthly. And by taking a deep dive, we can look at specific hours or listener demographics. Much like the targeting options on Facebook for certain qualitative criteria, we can look at that information for any of the radio stations in Fort Wayne, not just the 5 stations Federated Media operate.
Our oldest station, WOWO is now 99 years old and doing well. Our other stations which include Sports Talk 1380 the Fan, WMEE, K105, and The Bear are also doing well with a lot of listeners that want to spend money with businesses they trust. This is not a Fad, it’s a Thing. A Real Thing and if you want more information contact me.
by Scott Howard | Sep 9, 2020 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
For the past few years, President Donald Trump has called the major news media Fake News. Meanwhile the commentators on the networks and news organization he calls Fake, call the Presidents favorite channel Fake News. I’m not about to dive into a political rabbit hole but this is just one example of how we as consumers have been losing trust in the long standing traditional news media, no matter what side you are on, there’s someone on the other side that will say, you’re wrong and they are right.
What led to this widespread division is not just what the news organizations are doing, but the availability for anyone and everyone to become their own “media”. I’m talking about Social Media.
We can forget about Tom and MySpace which was the forerunner to Facebook. MySpace is still around but Tom skipped town.
Facebook is attempting to take over the world, still but in light of what they have been doing with data collection and arguing over their legal liabilities, Facebook is losing ground when it comes to Trust.
I just read a story that summarized findings of a survey taken this summer by Engagement Labs that points out how badly the trust factor in Social Media has fallen this year. How bad is it? “Facebook down 56%, Instagram down 38% and Twitter down 140%”
Yikes.
Now before I go any further with sharing the results from this story, I want you to know where I am coming from. Since 2003 I have worked exclusively in the marketing world. 8 years at a group of radio stations, followed by some shorter positions working for a website development company that specialized in marketing solutions, another several months back in radio, followed by nearly a year as the “Social Media Magician” at an ecommerce company before I returned to radio again in 2013.
The ScLoHo brand came about due to my online activity I was doing 15 years ago. I have lived in both social and online media along with traditional media for a long time and I know the strengths and weaknesses of all of it. The company I work for has a digital division and I can probably out debate anyone on the pros and cons of all this.
Back to this story and survey from this summer…
A new survey of radio listeners finds their trust in radio and its personalities continues to grow as social media has become far less trustworthy during the past year. Conducted by data and analytics firm Engagement Labs and commissioned by iHeartMedia, the study shows listeners ages 18-69 place higher trust in radio than in television or social media and that 79% of respondents said radio is more or just as trustworthy compared to a year ago while social media is 50% less trustworthy during the same time period.
Here’s more specific numbers:
Among radio listeners 18-69, the survey found 75% trust radio, 66% trust television, 57% trust websites, 38% trust Twitter and 37% trust Facebook.
My radio station, WOWO Radio is a news/talk formated station and I just received data relating to our listenership and the trust factor that I’ll share in a few weeks.
One more quote from this story:
The survey also found that an overwhelming majority of respondents indicated that radio improves their mood, helps them feel less isolated and more connected to their community. More than three-fourth of respondents (77%) trust the information they receive from their favorite on-air hosts. In addition, heavy radio listeners were found to wield robust word of mouth power for advertisers, having more brand conversations and more influence than heavy internet users and TV viewers.
It’s that last part, the robust word of mouth power for advertisers that I’ll gladly talk to you about specifically with regards to WOWO radio if you reach out to me and I’ll also be including that information in an upcoming article and podcast.
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by Scott Howard | Sep 17, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
If you don’t own it, you and your business are at risk. Years ago, my friend Kevin Mullett and I had this discussion and it’s true. Don’t Be Social Media Stupid with Your Business.
Let me explain.
Facebook is the world’s largest Social Media platform and they offer a multitude of ways for people like you and me to start a business, promote and grow a business, even become independently wealthy with a business that lives on Facebook.
The problem is if your business relies only on Facebook, you are eventually going to be hurt.
Facebook is your virtual landlord. Except when you have a real landlord relationship, there are contracts that you read and sign. Promises made by both parties and some guarantees for a period of time.
That’s not the way it works with Facebook or any of the other social media platforms.
Facebook can make changes and you have no say in the matter.
Does anyone remember reading the “Terms Of Service” when they signed up? Over 98% of us blindly just click on the checkbox without reading.
NBC news recently featured an article that included this story about a small business owner that relied on Facebook.
Holly Homer, an entrepreneur from Texas owns the Facebook pages for “Quirky Mama” and “Kids Activities.” With over 3 million followers, Homer’s Facebook page had become so popular she hired five employees and her husband quit his full-time medical job to help with the business. Homer showed NBC News a chart of interactions with her Facebook page that shows a decrease in February when Facebook implemented changes to News Feed.
As you can see, she was all-in when it came to running a Facebook based business. And that is where the problem lies. I did some of my own investigating and her Facebook page is Quirky Mama, but her website where she makes money is KidsActivities.com . But Holly is using another short cut that echos the mistake she made with Facebook. Her KidsActivities.com domain isn’t really her own website. Sure she owns the domain, but it’s actually just a sub-website on the Maven domain. Just like Facebook can change the rules, Maven can make changes and Holly will really be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
I know this is sounding technical, so let’s talk in everyday language. When you lease a car, you don’t own that car. There are some benefits to leasing over buying but because you never owned that car, the only value is the immediate value of having that car to use. You can’t sell it, because you never bought it.
If your business is built on someone else’s platform, like Facebook or Maven, in Holly’s case, she and her entire company are at risk of losing it all. Holly says:
One of the Facebook policy changes that kind of went under the radar and it went into effect in February was the branded content policy. And it decreased my income from Facebook by 60 percent, overnight. No explanation.
Facebook cares about Holly and doesn’t care about Holly. They walk the fine line of working for the greater good. Their priorities begin with #1, that’s Facebook itself. Second on their list is their stockholders and then we have the users. Facebook users fall into multiple categories. There’s you and me as a couple of individuals in the total Facebook universe of over a billion active users.
Holly and her business fall into another category. Facebook is free for you and me to use, but not so much if we are using Facebook to promote our business. Holly and other businesses have to pay to get their Facebook posts seen by the masses. Same is true for any organization that Facebook believes has money to spend to promote their message.
In the summer of 2013, I ran the social media department for a $50 million dollar e-commerce company. Our average sale was under $100, so we had a lot of customers to make up that $50 million each year. That summer, I saw Facebook make a change in their algorithm that reduced the number of people my Facebook post were reaching by 75%. Fortunately, I knew what to do, move some of my budget around and spend a little more.
Facebook is constantly making changes. All you can do is figure out how to adapt. But there is something else you really need to do too.
Own your own online presence. If your only online presence is a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter handle, LinkedIn account, Snapchat account, or a free WordPress or Blogger website, prepare to lose it all.
That was part of the lesson I learned from my conversation with Kevin Mullett in 2011. I had made a name for myself with a few marketing blogs that were hosted free on Google’s Blogger platform. They are living there, you can find them if you Google ScLoHo.
However in 2011, I also bought my own domain and website hosting service for ScottHoward.me It’s where all of my content lives. I update every week still with a new story and article like this one.
Facebook and all the other social media platforms have a purpose still. They are being used simply as a marketing tool, not a place to host a business. Websites were around before social media. A website without any publicity is not going to get any visitors. Use social media as a tool to draw people to your website if you want, but please don’t confuse the two.
One more item from the 20 year old in my family, Jake. He posted this on Facebook the other day:
Hey friends and fam ,
I will be deleting my Facebook account or at least the app because I have been really wanting to change my daily habits and my phone is not a good one .. so I will not be on here for at least a couple months but I hope each and every one of you continue to strive to be the best you can be each and every day.
Jake is Gen Z. He’s in college. He and others of his generation don’t care about or even trust Facebook anymore. This is a another warning sign. I have advertising partners on WOWO Radio that use WOWO to drive traffic to their website.There are other ways besides social media to drive people to your website and we’ll talk about that soon. In the meantime please remember this: If you don’t own it, you and your business are at risk.
Want help in figuring all this out and creating something more stable? Let’s talk.
by Scott Howard | Aug 15, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Time to introduce myself, again for some of you that I’ve known for awhile, and perhaps for the first time if you are unfamiliar with this website and podcast.
This is episode 75 of the weekly podcast titled, The Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast.
Launched in early 2017 as a request from a couple of the managers at Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they were asked to create a sales and marketing oriented podcast and they asked me if I would consider doing it.
See this ScLoHo thing has been around for quite awhile. On the ScottHoward.me website are over 13 hundred articles I have written, edited and published since 2011 and the Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast is simply an audio version of most of the articles I have created since March, 2017.
The history of ScLoHo however is much longer that that.
And before we dig into that history, I want to clear something up about what ScLoHo is.
ScLoHo began as an email address and grew into an online moniker, identity and nickname. I even registered a marketing company with the ScLoHo name. ScLoHo is a made up word that takes the first two letters of my first name, middle and last names and mashes them together. Scott Louis Howard becomes ScLoHo. Look for me on Twitter, Instagram and nearly any other social media site that I am on as ScLoHo. Before launching the ScottHoward.me website, I published over 10,000 articles on ScLoHo branded blogs starting around 2005.
So ScLoHo and Scott Howard, that’s me, are synonymous.
I began working in the media world as a teenager when my high school launched a radio station. After school, I landed my first full time job on the air in Marion, Indiana at WBAT, followed by WIOU in Kokomo, WMEE in Fort Wayne, WKSY in Columbia City, WZWZ in Kokomo, and WXIR in Indianapolis. At all of these stations, I worked on the air as a disc jockey and radio personality.
Life changed when I turned 26. I crossed over to the advertising side of the radio business. I was impressed by the philosophy that the Crawford Broadcasting Company had regarding the relationship between the listeners, the radio station and the advertisers. I moved my young family to work for WMUZ in Detroit, one of a dozen Crawford stations at the time. My job was to write and produce advertising campaigns.
I loved the challenge and learning that occurred during my 8 years at WMUZ. I also did fill-in work in the afternoon and spent about a year hosting WMUZ’s morning show in Detroit. My first venture as an advertising salesperson was also at WMUZ.
The philosophy that I learned related to the trust factor we as people have. WMUZ was and is a commercial Christian radio station that has a special bond with their thousands of weekly listeners. Listeners trust the WMUZ radio personalities. Those personalities often talk about their advertising partners and so that trust factor is passed along to the businesses that advertise. WMUZ listeners trust that the businesses that advertise on their station are trustworthy.
My job was not just to create effective advertising campaigns, but to screen out the bad businesses from the good. I carry this philosophy today as I consider which businesses I want to work with at WOWO radio in Fort Wayne.
In the mid 1990’s, we decided to leave Detroit and return to Indiana. I worked on the radio again in Fort Wayne at WBTU, WFWI, WGL and WAJI. Between 1995 and 2003, along with some part-time radio work and voice over production I was doing, I took a few blue collar jobs too in the printing business, the plastics industry and even automotive.
2003 was the year that I returned to media and marketing full-time in Fort Wayne when I joined a group of radio stations in the advertising sales side of the business. I spent 8 years rising as high as one could advance at that company before I was lured away to work for a website development company and later manage the social media for a $50 million dollar internet sales company.
Kevin, Ric and me. Picture snapped by my friend Ryan Recker.
I also served on the Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation/Fort Wayne Chapter for 7 years. I taught personal branding seminars, guest lectured at a local university, was featured in some national publications including the Wall Street Journal, won a few awards and have had a lot of fun. I have consulted and coached businesses doing newspaper and magazine ads, billboard advertising, social media and all kinds of internet marketing, along with television and event marketing. More recently I was featured on an international podcast for broadcasters to share what it takes to be successful in broadcasting.
I only share all this with you because I want you to have confidence in the Scott Howard dude a.k.a. ScLoHo, that I’m not just hear to sell you stuff. I am here to help. I’m here to teach, to consult, to advise, to coach and even guide you through the process of marketing you and your business.
Human Relationship Principles are the heart of most successful marketing and advertising efforts and I can help you employ them with your business, organization, or event.
I have learned a lot from a lot of people and continue to learn more and more every week. If you have any marketing or advertising questions or answers, I’d love to talk with you.
by Scott Howard | May 21, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
What’s a ScLoHo Insider Extra?
It’s an extra article that I (ScLoHo) published that is not going to be available on the Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast. That’s the Extra part. You as a follower, are an Insider. Before I began the podcast in 2017, I would publish at least once a week, but sometimes more often. I still will write these Extra stories on occasion, so let’s dig in.
Awhile ago, I wrote about knowing the difference between Marketing Trends and Marketing Fads. Trends are long-term sustainable and even though they may go out of style, they are worth consideration. Fads on the other hand are dangerous and you need to be cautious if you are thinking of investing time or money in them.
Social Media has been filled with both Fads and Trends and marketing people are always attempting to be on top of both. I went to a Social Media & Marketing Breakfast in Fort Wayne last year that was devoted to Snapchat. I had mixed thoughts on Snapchat as a marketing platform before and after the event.
Granted, I’m not in the target demo for using Snapchat, but never-the-less, I’m a marketing dude who understands the big picture and the human relationship principles of marketing and advertising.
Turns out that Snapchat is falling out of favor with Social Media Marketers.
This is from Mediaposts Marketing Charts:
What’s trending in social media marketing? The latest annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner, based on a survey of more than 5,700 participants around the world, offers some insights into marketers’ preferences surrounding social media platforms and content.
It’s worth noting at the outset that the majority of respondents are from small businesses (1-10 employees), so this report is likely not a reflection of the activities of larger enterprise businesses.
(I work with small and medium sized businesses for the most part.)
The first chart is shows where Social Media Marketers are going to spend their time with organic posts. This next chart shows where they plan on spending their marketing money:
Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) are winners in both organic and paid activity. By the way, think of Organic as an investment in time and Paid as an investment in money. Having been a full time Social Media Marketing Manager in my previous full-time employment, I have the credentials to speak from experience.
When I had a budget for Twitter and Pinterest, I actually moved those funds to Facebook paid promotion instead. Also I personally don’t use Pinterest, but 5 years ago it outperformed Facebook for trackable sales for the B2C internet retailer I worked for.
I found the better use for Twitter was for customer service and turned our account over to that department to use.
Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram all require someone to run your marketing campaign that really knows what they are doing and are staying on top of the changes that are going on. None of this social media marketing should be left in the hands of amateurs if you really want to use social media to market your business.
Reach out to me if you have questions or want recommendations.
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