Week 4: Using social media to generate revenue for your farmer program

[Laila]

Thank you too @Busi_Ngcebetsha for being a good moderator. God bless you and the whole team at Farm Radio International.

Cheers.
Laila

[Emmanuel]

Hello Friends here,

My ideas on this questions asked for this week 4

a) What social media do you use for your radio program, or at your station and why?

At my station Voice of Kigezi, the popular social media used is face book. At face book you can send messages to many different people who are on different network
The reason why face book is popular at my radio station is that it is cheap for both the radio and the listeners and everyone can afford to use a cheap price. I mean you require little money for Mbs and you can again join on 0-facebook if you don’t have Mbs.
b) In your experience which social media is most effective for interacting with your audience? In my experience, Whatsapp is effective when interacting with my audience.
c) Do you see a link between using social media and generating revenue for your radio program? Please explain?

1. Off course. -Social media is very good and every person whenever he or she is can access it as long as you have data on your phone, computer or even if you don’t have and it is affordable.
2. most of the population in the world especially my country Uganda is the youth. and most of them don’t have employments but have phone only to chat to their friends and look for jobs so I look at social media as a better link for generating revenue for my radio program.
3. Thirdly, through social media, you advertise your radio program for free and if you are lucky you can get free sponsors to fund your program.
   d) How have you seen social media used to generate revenue for a radio program? (This could be at your station or another station).
   Mine being a radio station and watching different televisions, I have seen and heard listeners using social media that include twitter, whatsaap, face book and other social media platforms to organize and inform the public of their wedding parties, birthday parties, meetings and even doing businesses that can bring business to my radio station. She at times gives surprise gifts to people they tell her to surprise…and so many other social events that she does through the social networks.
   e) What is one question about generating revenue for your program that you would like to ask people participating in this e-Discussion?
   How could one approach a sponsor who has an Idea to sponsor a farmer programme at our radio .
   Have a blessed weekend my lovely friends.

Emmanuel Arineitwe Julius uganda

[Ntakirutimana]

Here is my response to Week four questions.

How are you all?

1. What social media do you use for your radio program or at your station and why?
   The main social media I use is Face book because it is available to most of my listeners and this is because telecom companies normally offer free MBs for people to use on Face book.
2. Do you see a link between using social media and generating revenue for your radio program?
   Yes, there is a link between the two because when you are looking for advertisers you can use the page that you have created on social media and the response on it to show the advertisers as a back up to support your proposal for them to advertise with you. For example in my program we got an individual who sponsors a segment where we talk about poultry keeping and the person show our posts on face book and he showed interest.
3. My question to the e-discussion group is:- What advise can we give to women famers to compete favorably with their male counterparts in commercial farming?

[rehema]

@Busi_Ngcebetsha I would like to comment on the issue of having five or four presenters in a 2 hour program. It is true they have all the 4 05 five and this is on the FM radios which do more entertainment than developmental programs so you will hear them at times speaking at the same time, that is fighting for the microphone but it is a trend now a days. But for me I think two presenters in a program, preferably, a male and a female are enough for the program

[DenisLindo]

Dear Friends,

As we come close to the end of these great 4-weeks sharing ideas, I have had an opportunity to listen and observe great content from many of your submissions on the issues we had on the floor or platform. At times one would wish that the opportunity went on….but each beginning would have an end at some point in time.

Back at the reflection of 4-weeks. We had a great Ice breaker and dived into “Knowing your Audience” and explored “Best sources of revenue……looking deeply into the question of diversification” and lastly got into “Social Media” ….further exploring the potential for revenue generation from this growing technology.

It’s clear that in our discussions we concentrated most of our submissions focusing on the station, the program, the listener and the sponsor/advertiser.

For the Station, some of the issues bordered on station predictability and being on air consistently.

About the Program, some of the key issues bordered on content and delivery, research and relevance of the program.

The listeners; this is what we all targeted our discussions to aiming at attracting them and hoped that with them in our possession, we would get the advertiser/sponsor in our media houses.

Little did we focus on the “cook” (Presenter) that makes this possible. For without this “cook” very little can be achieved.

Many stations have made tremendous amounts of money besides the traditional sources of money solely from the caliber of the presenter that they have. It might be common knowledge but let’s briefly focus on what would make a presenter make more money for the station.

If a presenter had any of the following, such a presenter would attract the great listenership even for a farmers’ program.

1. Great Strengths such as; Dependability, Reliability, Trustworthiness, and Predictability. These strengths move mountains of listenership that turns into loyalty.

2. Lessening of Weaknesses Such as; Taking Listeners for Granted and not being forgetful of required resources on air or even constantly remembering listeners voices and names.

3. Taking an opportunity to entrench into the listener’s personality, drawing listeners closer since they trust and depend on this presenter for all their information needs. The Presenter needs to evolve into “an encyclopedia” of sorts in a very simplified way. Making the listeners long and wish to tap into his /her wealth of resourcefulness. This situation puts the listener at the point of vulnerability for the advertiser/sponsor to tap into.

4. The presenter exercising Great Talent- A talent would set everyone aside and a step apart from another person. This also applies to Presenters… they are not an exception!

Being talented here means applying what God has given you in away that no one else can!. Imagine a presenter who has or is;

• A great memory for past and current
• Eloquent in core and more other languages
• Great at mobilization and marketing skills
• Good at Public Speaking
• Logical in all approaches
• Resourceful to the core
• Entertainer
• Humble
• Patient
• Multi-Lingual
• Creative and is a
• Revolutionary

5. This Presenter MUST Guard against challenges of fame and publicity as well steer away from PRIDE…for Pride comes before a fall!

Friends, I believe this presenter would cause about 50% of listenership loyal to his /her program but also cause the advertisers to specifically scramble for his /her program……How I wish that program were a farmers’ program.

Thank You!

Denis Lindo
Resource Person
Farm Radio
Generating Revenue
E-Discussion-2018

[Mugwisagye]

Well… Smawerere, might have lacked a better word but my intent was to refer to the modern times.
Much as the radio station i work with runs a whatsapp account for general programming, i haven’t used it for the farmers’ program because most in my audience are not smart phone users though they own or can access mobile phones.
however since you ask about how i would use the whatsapp popular platform to get persistent new listeners, i think i would run a group as a pilot and see its impact, especially since farming/ agriculture is getting more mordernised and attracting more youthful farmers who are into whatsapp use.
Then i would post topic for dicussion, get responses and questions, photos and videos from field farmer visits to keep the listener using whatsapp following and listening in.

[rehema]

Presenters’ field trips create a bond with the community and they are often hired as MC for private events and they are also hired as stars and their voices used for the production of adverts with ensuing income for the producer, the program and the station.

Thank you Busi for sharing these posts from our French counterparts they are quite stimulating.
I have a query? Does it mean that if a presenter or producer is hired as MC for a private function or event or if his/her voice is used in the production of adverts of some sort; the money collected/acquired is shared between the present/producer and his station or worse still is it all paid to the station s/he works for?

[rehema]

Social media marketing helps to validate your brand. A company’s social media presence, when done correctly, tells consumers that their brand is active and focused on thriving communication with consumers. In the case of radio stations, the listener is the consumer.

This can easily be achievable in a place like uganda where MBs are very cheap because of the competition between service providers (The telecom companies each wanting more customers too) who are also trying to grab a bigger share of the internet user. So fellow Media Houses use this chance to attract more advertisers.

Being talented here means applying what God has given you in away that no one else can!. Imagine a presenter who has or is;

• A great memory for past and current

• Eloquent in core and more other languages

• Great at mobilization and marketing skills

• Good at Public Speaking

• Logical in all approaches

• Resourceful to the core

• Entertainer

• Humble

• Patient

• Multi-Lingual

• Creative and is a

• Revolutionary

This Presenter MUST Guard against challenges of fame and publicity as well steer away from PRIDE…for Pride comes before a fall!

Friends, I believe this presenter would cause about 50% of listener ship loyal to his /her program but also cause the advertisers to specifically scramble for his /her program……How I wish that program were a farmers’ program.

Thank you @DenisLindo for this eloquent analysis of a good presenter, a talented one; well I can say that Talent is God given, but it can be built and trained also. On this note I wish to acknowledge Farm Radio International plus all its Resource persons for having trained a number of us on such a platform and transformed us into the ‘Talented’ lovable presenters that we are today, especially me! Thank you and God Bless you.

Busi, thank you for being a good moderator!

[Busi_Ngcebetsha]

This was from the French side @rehema but here in South Africa, if such method is used, not just for events but for sponsored programs, there is a fee for producers as well as the program/station. This means the producers will earn a certain percentage from the proceedings.

[mikepac715]

Hi Jaspher,

Please don’t get it twisted, the mindset of people living in different community differs. With us here, farmers have decided to make that choice because the cooperative suggested that since before we came. We all know facebook as top but things are gradually changing from this end.

Remember before facebook came to be in the late 90’s we had yahoo messager, dragnet and many others, whose voices today are no longer heard as Facebook, whatsapp, instagram, linkedIn, twitter etc. I hope this make sense now.

Lets keep posting.

Mikepac715

[smawerere]

I think i am satisfied with the answer you have given here Mugwisagye!

For sure modern times of social media like facebook, whatApp, Instagram, YouTube are for the new, young, urban and literate farmers. Although majority on our eDiscussion WhatsApp group said we should train also the remote/ rural farmers on those social media platforms, it is not a snap shot though we wish so. Challenges like lack of smart phones to many, electricity, lack of knowledge to use the Apps etc etc bar our remote farmers from discussing or accessing more other info on facebook or whatsApp. Apart from the youth, modern and urban-like farmers and agro-business dealers.

Thank you Mugwisagye and colleagues here.

Sarah.

[smawerere]

Wow!!

I am overwhelmed!!

Regards,

Sarah.

[Busi_Ngcebetsha]

Hello everyone

We have officially come to the end of the discussion on generating revenue. It has been an awesome four weeks. The platform will still be available for some time after this. Our resource person @DenisLindo gave an overview/review of the four weeks we were together. If you missed it you can see it here

This week we were focusing on social media… We were sharing experiences on what our stations use and what we find effective… In as much as we have a lot of social media platforms, facebook seems to be the most popular, probably because it is easily accessible and it is easy to record numbers. These numbers can then be used to source out adverts and sponsirship. It is a known fact that advertisers want to reach larger audiences.

The document we shared earlier on in the week explains the different media platforms we can use to generate revenue and how they are used. In case you have missed it, please see Social media generating revenue.docx (18.6 KB) The document gives us ideas of generating revenue using social media.

Issues about social media being relevant to young people came up. At the same time it was shared that most farmers have smart phones and that helps them stay in touch. Besides facebook, most stations use whatsapp and even have whatsapp groups for certain radio programmes.

Whatever social media platform you may be using, it is beneficial to you gaining more listenership figures and attracting more sponsors or advertisers. If you are not yet there, find a way to start now.

As we close, I would like to encourage you to make sure you contribute in all topics more than once and stand a chance to be awarded a certificate of participation. Please use the weekend to do that. Remember the evaluation survey we shared this morning, FRI also shared it with you. Please make time to fill it in.

Kind regards

Busi

[Odongo_Wendo_Bonifac]

Thanks Blythe for the advice but those are the challenges we have here in Oyam District and just requesting if the opportunity comes help and consider us.

[Wandeba_Alex]

1. The mostly used social media at my station is face book, sms and somewhat whatsapp.
2. I find sms and face being used so often in the course of the program and even after on a particular discussion.
   3.It does indeed leads to generating revenue because on many occasions advertisers always ask about the size of the station’s listener ship and this has therefore made them to believe upon showing them.

[Wandeba_Alex]

I do agree with you Sarah on the question of the link between using the media and generating revenue for the program. You point out that by sharing audio recordings can entice advertisers. True because this ensures continuity with your guests and in the process they do also share with other stakeholders including donors and funders. So it does really widen the network and popularity for the show standing high chance for sponsorship.

[RAY]

Boss please if your people use WhatsApp and you are saying Facebook is the most effective what do you mean? Are talking in general?

[RAY]

Our station use uses WhatsApp to communicate with our audiences. It allows them to connect with us anytime.
It also hepls them to take picture and make videos about diseases affecting their crops and we then research on it and at times send it to the Ministries for solutions.

[RAY]

On behalf of my very self as the producer of the farm program on our radio, the presenter, the marketing team and the management of Jubilee Radio, I wish to express our profound gratitude to Farm Radio International, Sister Busi and Mr Denis for their works. We have learnt a lot and it will a long way to impact positively on our station.
Thank you so much may God richly bless and replenish you all and to those who share most of their experiences we “Ayeeko”

[ufiste]

My contributions for the questions asked in week 4
Question 1. What social media do you use for your radio program, or at your station and why?
• Whatsapp, because it is the most widely used in my community by the people, since many regards it to be user friendly and practical.
Question 2. In your experience which social media is most effective for interacting with your audience?
• Facebook, and whats app
Question 3. Do you see a link between using social media and generating revenue for your radio program? Please explain.
• YES, there is a link between social media and generating revenue for my radio program.