Social Media Marketing?

How does social media marketing work? I'll tell you how it doesn't work for me, but it might be because I'm a jaded communication specialist: Making an incomplete television commercial with a message to visit the Oreo cookie Facebook page to find out what happens next.

Friending a consumer product on Facebook seems rediculous to me, because I use social media to chat with people I already know. If I want to make tons of new friends, I use MySpace because it allows me to create totally anonymous unique identities.

Facebook forces users to be honest about their identities, so I'm very cautious about new friends and I'm forced to limit my communication to more civilized rhetoric. Also, I like a tightly concentrated list of relevant messages from close friends. I don't like a lot of junk filling my pages, so I block all applications like Farmville too.

Local radio talk-shows are my special exception. I listen to WMAY AM 970 http://www.wmay.com in the morning and I like to use Facebook to communicate with the hosts, when they decide to post their topics, that is. Normally, they encourage people to call in and talk to them on the phone, but I'm not a phone person.

They sometimes have the courtesy to repeat some Facebook posts on the air as part of their discussions. I find this encouraging because it motivates me to promote their station and website where one can listen live anywhere in the world, not just within the limited range of their radio transmitter.

Sometimes they don't start topic threads on Facebook and it leaves me wondering if I just do a Wall post, it might simply get lost out of the proper context of a particular morning's discussion.

One afternoon WMAY radio host has taken  the Internet by the horns and built his own online forum. http://www.godofradio.com A.K.A. The Kramer Show forum allows listeners to sign up for free and interact even more freely than Facebook because users can make up anonymous avatars and identities.

The point is that AM radio is gaining new life thanks to the Internet. It's up to AM radio organizations to take seriously, the value of the Internet as a potential source of new listeners, and start budgeting for new computers and faster Internet.