You are now the relied upon News Channel people are looking for.
Advances in the amount of media channels we have in our world both increases the chances of you gaining fame (for yourself or your business) and also decreases it especially when compared to how things were years ago. I recently watched an old documentary on YouTube about Jimmy White the snooker player and something he said set a thought in my mind to write this blog “you only had four channels on the TV then so everyone knew you, so you was really famous”. Yes I remember those days and I am sure many reading this blog will also remember, the days when the likes of Jim Bowen’s Bullseye was getting in the region of an incredible 17 million average weekly viewing figures with such a limited budget spend on the show… I am sure producers of any TV show these days would give their right arm for such figures when even having millions of pounds of spending budgets. So back then, if you were getting the prime slots in the half time advertisements you were hitting a potential third of the UK population – Amazing for the Fairly Liquids, KiteKat, Smiths Crisps, Cadburys Flake and other household adverts that could afford that 2-3 minute Bullseye commercial slot!
These days, such figures are difficult to achieve as there are obviously many more channels for people to choose from, not only on the television, but also on the internet. It is still possible to become a household name on television these days, but this comes with big budgets ie Ant and Dec, Simon Cowell, Jeremy Kyle, TOWIE, Goggle Box, Keith Lemon and a few other celebrities and shows. I ask though, can you really achieve fantastic viewing figures by appearing on one of the lesser known channels at an unsociable hour with small budgets or via online social media platforms?
Viewing / listening / reading figures are what count in media right? Your main task is to attract enough interest in order to command revenue which could be direct new business or from sponsorships/advertisements which is certainly not easy these days, competition is immense and grabbing the attention of the audience is so very hard and we know that people’s attention span these days is much less than it was a few years back.
Do you remember years ago that if there was a News Flash on television it was exciting stuff, what was the news going to be we wondered as we’d all no doubt not be up to date on what was happening in the world (most of us relied on the news on television such as the Six O’Clock News or News at Ten). How things have changed whereas news now finds us, in fact whereas the BBC or ITV were the ones back then at the centre of any news flash and were the eyes over any big incidents that was happening, we now have the capability of sharing a News Flash at any time ourselves. In fact, if we ourselves have captured something unique by way of images or videos and share it out across social media, it could be us that are seen as the ‘News Flash‘ channel and those millions of eyes will be viewing, talking about and sharing our news. We are ourselves, if we take the opportunity to, the media channels these days.
We do not need the conventional media as we did before, social media opens up the whole world to any message we wish to share. Yes, we have moved away from the days of basic TV shows hitting 10’s of millions of viewers and most of us will not have the endless marketing budgets to attract big names and viewing figures, but what we do all possess are free to use channels that are open to the worldwide audience – The amount of viewers we get is down to the quality of content we are sharing.
So, can you attract an audience to you or your business? Yes most certainly you can as the opportunity to share with the world what you do becomes easier and easier. Importantly, it may not all be down to huge numbers, the volume is rather irrelevant compared to the quality of eyes looking over your content – Basic of course, everyone knows that yes, but many fail to realise that when using the likes of social media. What we are able to do more so these days is to be very precise with the audiences we build for our businesses, we can target areas, interests, ages and more to make sure that when we share our content the right people are looking our way. Yes, Bullseye may have had a third of the UK population watching it, but just how many of them would have gone to the kitchen to pop the kettle on during the break to make themselves a cuppa ready to watch Bully’s prize board in the second half of the show? Figures will be a lot lower for the adverts as people are not really interested in being pushed with sales when enjoying their leisure time – As a current day example, Youtube is now full of adverts, just how many times do you watch the whole 3 minute advert before that video you want to watch or do you simply hover over skip video and click once the 5 seconds are up?
So we need to be clever in how we deliver our message to our target audience. This can mean that it is not necessarily us marketing our products and services as the centre of attention in what we share, we could look at broadcasting subjects that have no direct relevance to our businesses. As an estate agency, yes we have to let people know who we are and where our business is positioned, but can you make yourself famous to your target audience by broadcasting off topic? It is trying to think outside the box which is sometimes hard, beyond normal property listing updates, ie how to present your garden for sale or the ten best tips on interior designing – Surely cooking or classic cars is not where you should be heading though?
I would say that cooking and classic cars should be where you could look to head, if those type of enthusiasts would be your target audience? Those who have the time and indeed finances to appreciate fine home cooking or have budgets to spend on a classic car interest could be those looking to purchase or sell the type of property your agency feeds on. I also recommend teaming up when it comes to ‘creating your own media channels’ so find out which names locally has a name already in these two example topics (we could of course choose many other off topic subjects) and suggest a partnership / venture where you can deliver to the local community entertaining / educational content (images, videos etc).
To to round things up, television once was a massive marketing channel that could draw in millions of viewers with very little budget spend. Nowadays we have many more channels to chose from so it is much harder to gather good viewing figures, but importantly too, we are now more in command of audiences than we were before. Today we have the opportunity to become the media channel ourselves and if we use the likes of social media, then we can share out our own content that allows us to build our own target audiences that can help to build our businesses. Think outside of the service you offer when deciding what content to share, it could be totally off topic subjects that gets you far better reach and more active audiences.
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