The coronavirus pandemic has shown us just how much humans crave positive, social connection. Throughout various stages of lockdown, we have seen that when people feel connected, they become happier, more engaged and highly loyal. Read more

As you become more comfortable with incorporating Fabrik into your daily workflows, you may have realised the importance of strategic planning around how you're engaging your audience using your app. Your app audience is more often than not your most engaged, most loyal audience and therefore may require an approach to engagement that's different to your other channels! Your app is also packed with unique features and functionality you can leverage to create a memorable experience for your app community and value for your advertisers. As such, we recommend implementing a two-pronged approach to your app engagement that keeps your app top-of-mind, by incorporating events, campaigns or special programming as well as ongoing inclusion in daily programming. Implementing a successful app engagement strategy requires collaboration across all teams within your organisation, so here are some steps on how to ensure you are doing so in the most effective way. step 1: consider your overall audience engagement objectives When creating your app engagement strategy, it's important to keep your overall audience engagement strategy across all your channels in mind. These may be broad directives informed by your overall business strategy such as expanding your reach across all channels, measuring and increasing audience engagement based on specific metrics or building your audience to position and support your advertising offering in a certain way. In terms of formulating that overall audience engagement strategy, we generally recommend considering the following aspects: Growth - what are the ways you're consistently growing your audience by connecting with individuals on different channels who were not aware you existed before? Engagement - once someone has connected with you on one or more of your channels, how are you adding ongoing value to them to ensure you retain them as a loyal follower? Monetisation - once you've grown your audience and are adding ongoing value to them, how are you positioning your audience in a way that it is attractive to advertisers? (If you're uncertain about how to create an engagement strategy, get in touch with us - we can help!) Step 2: Prepare your App Experience to support your Audience Engagement initiatives Once your overall audience engagement strategy is in place, the next step is to configure the engagement aspects of your app to enable the app engagement you'd like to encourage. Conversations and Channels are the two types of messaging groups available within your app that can be configured to different types of engagement, as follows: Conversations are true engagement groups, interactive message groups where anyone who is a part of that conversation can post content. Channels are read-only message groups in which only 'Trusted' individuals (members who you assign the 'Trusted' status, such as administrators or moderators) can post content. Decide what types of groups you need according to key initiatives in your business, and configure them according to the level of interaction you would like. Remember that Contact Us is a Direct Messaging conversation where each app member can connect directly with you via your Smashboard application, or centralised messaging dashboard. When you send a message to all or individual members via Smashboard, your message will appear in that direct conversation only for the individual/s receiving that message. Find out more about how Conversations and Channels work and how you can create and configure them yourself using the Community Centre community management dashboard. Step 3: Consider specific engagement tactics Now that your app environment is ready for engagement, leveraging your app to support your business strategy becomes easier. When thinking about how to effectively engage your audience, consider how to promote what is coming up in your on-air broadcast and what would entice your app audience to keep coming back. There are a number of different tactics you can use that are related to a two-pronged approach of using both events like campaigns, and ongoing engagement initiatives. Ongoing Engagement Regular Features - use your direct Messaging group to let your audience know about upcoming shows or interviews to ensure engagement on your Fabrik-powered live stream, and capitalise on your most popular features by throwing forward to them in the app. Shows - consider adding show-specific conversations or channels for your most popular shows and invite your presenters/DJs to post in them. You could also get listeners involved by asking them to send you their messages or voice notes before the show, to be played out on air. Community Chat - institute a general Community Chat where your community can come together to talk about topics they're interested in! Campaigns Exclusive Content and/or Special Offers - use your app to share content your audience won't be able to find anywhere else, and/or partner with advertisers to offer exclusive deals only available via the app. Competitions - use fun competitions, quizzes and games to give your audience multiple opportunities to re-enter your app. To truly leverage the app experience in ways that your other digital channels might not be able to deliver, consider how to integrate some of these unique features into your execution: 1. Push notifications (or messages that pop up on the home/lock screen of an individual's device) are a great way to invite engagement into the app, and you can configure each of your Messaging groups to either Notify by Default or not. 2. Podcasts - record on-air moments (competition segments, interviews or recurring features) as a podcast, and send a message or push notification to let your audience know there's a new podcast that's been published. 3. Billboards - add app billboards for an additional awareness component around your ongoing programme initiatives and campaigns. 4. Pop-up message group - easily add topical messaging groups into your app around specific events or topics to stimulate engagement amongst your audience. Step 4: Identify & empower key role-players from other departments To ensure the success of your new app engagement strategy, it's important to consider how it impacts your colleagues in other departments. Ask, how does this addition to the overall digital strategy impact other teams and, just as important, how does your app engagement strategy translate into ways that other teams can contribute and win? These initiatives may include training and education on how the app impacts on other departments, and how their own business strategy can benefit from this. Key to this is the continual promotion of the app via the below channels. Programming/On-air - ensure the on-air team are informed as to how they should be inviting listeners to your app, and empower them with scripts and live-reads that can be easily incorporated into their shows. Marketing - empower your colleagues in the Marketing team with information about the app they can share on your social platforms i.e. highlighting app functionality, topical Messaging groups or exclusive content. Promotions - ensure the team/s working on campaigns within your organisation know exactly how to include the app in the execution of campaigns, i.e. using app-based calls-to-action or tracking the impact of the campaign using keywords set up in Smashboard's Campaign Manager. Sales - if you're engaging with the Sales team in your organisation, offer to take them through your new app engagement strategy so they're aware of how to leverage these tactics and benefits in their Sales pitches. Step 5: Report back on your engagement initiatives to obtain buy-in The last step in the implementation of your new app engagement strategy is to let your stakeholders and colleagues know how you're doing! Fabrik makes this easy by visualising all your audience engagement and live-streaming data within the Metrics application, which you can easily access and incorporate into your reporting, to assure stakeholders that what you're doing is having an impact. Further Info Read how to configure Conversations and Channels within your app. Hear from Anice & Jonathan on how to kick-start Digital Transformation in your environment in this Fabrik webinar. In this webinar, Kelly, Bevan & Darren demonstrate the metrics and insights available within the Fabrik platform.

Durban-based tech company immedia has invested R10m to help African media entrepreneurs to build sustainable community radio by using Fabrik, a set of cloud-enabled digital tools that empower media entities to livestream shows, grow and engage with audiences around the world and benefit financially by monetising their audiences. The 25-year-old company, which has the backing of Microsoft and the Industrial Development Corporation, has been developing their Fabrik technology since 2017. Fabrik allows media entrepreneurs to upend the traditional notion of “we broadcast and you receive”, by creating a feedback loop that directly helps the stations and listeners that use it to leapfrog old technology, to become citizen journalists and find their strategic space in a digitally transformed world. It is already being used by 15 commercial clients, including radio stations Gagasi FM, Smile 90.4FM and YFM. As part of its Digital Leap programme, immedia will be giving its platform to qualifying media entrepreneurs across Africa for free for a year. This includes consultation, training and support to help monetize the technology, cumulatively valued at R10 million. Phil Molefe, a veteran of broadcast radio in South Africa, Fabrik’s head of business development and strategy, says the programme was key to the company’s vision to spearhead media transformation. He says the uptake of Fabrik by energetic entrepreneurs at community radio stations showed how empowering the suite of digital tools is. “It enables them to deepen their relationship with their audience and monetise it sustainably because the quality of their engagement with listeners is meaningful.” Building stable, sustainable community radio across Africa Molefe points out that while community media is often under-resourced and struggles to retain skills, the company’s case studies have shown that it is more than possible for them to thrive - and that the Digital Leap programme is the kind of opportunity they need, and can succeed on. Fabrik helps media entrepreneurs by solving key challenges for them, including: Providing them with a mobile application that allows community and campus radio stations to livestream shows, as well host podcasts, allowing them to reach audiences well beyond the geographic constraints of their traditional radio broadcast signal. By shifting to a cloud-based tool, radio stations get access to archival and backup that is compliant with BCCSA and Icasa regulations. This helps them to significantly cut down on time and resources required to manually back up radio content to on-site servers or even tape. Messaging functionality, including push notifications, so that stations can better engage with their communities, publish written or multimedia content and even promote active conversation between listeners. Push notifications help drive engagement by bringing attention to active competitions, surveys and polls, recently published content, and more. By encouraging listeners to register as a member and provide some of their personal information, such as geographics and demographics, stations are able to build audience profiles for their listeners, and gain a better understanding of their needs and preferences. These detailed analytics provided by Fabrik gives stations the data they need to convince advertisers and marketers of the value of promoting their products and services through the station’s app, helping bring in much needed revenue. Fabrik has a range of users, and about 60% of their listeners have an opt-in relationship with their broadcasters. By building and growing owned communities, stations then stand to benefit financially by serving highly relevant ads to their digital listeners. In addition, where sales conversions on social media are around 2%, Fabrik users enjoy 8%. According to Tamie Mbombo, head of marketing and PR at Izwi loMzansi, one of the largest community radio stations in South Africa, says that the platform has revolutionised the station’s engagement with its listeners, and has led the digital charge with featured podcasts and integrated advertising campaigns on the Izwi mobile app. “Community media’s aim is to provide trusted information and expression, and Fabrik has helped do that,” he says. A change of mindset is required The Fabrik team made some interesting observations based on the experiences of early adopters of the technology, including around community radio, where many advertisers and business decision-makers are often dismissive of the audience. “For example, one of our clients is a station with an audience in the LSM four to six range. That audience is typically regarded as ‘too poor’ or too marginalised to go digital and yet our clients are proving that they are taking to it like ducks to water,” Molefe says. He says that the take up by media entrepreneurs, either regarded as ‘on the fringes’ or as outliers, is the best showcase for Fabrik. “They are doing what they do because nobody told them they couldn’t - and it is proving to be a great leveller. We’ve seen how powerful this platform is in the community media space, which is why we are looking at boosting the rate of transformation.” Watch the full event here:

Despite the onslaught of music streaming services, radio can carve out a niche for themselves online by nurturing a loyal, engaged and geographically diverse listener base that can ultimately generate additional revenue, says the team at Fabrik. The team adds that stations will, however, have to overcome their fear of digital and take the leap in order to avoid being left behind. Read more

Every three months, our Customer Success team surveys our customers in both the Radio and Managed Communities industries to get a gauge on the value that Fabrik is currently contributing to your business, and how we can improve our service to you. This is done in 2 different ways: 1. Quantitative information A survey is emailed to each of our Fabrik administrators, i.e. those who have login access to applications such as Smashboard and Echocast. The responses give us quantitative information regarding how our product and services are being received across our base of administrators. 2. Qualitative information Our team also conducts in-person interviews with a segment of our Fabrik client base to gain qualitative insights into how Fabrik is contributing to their success. In the final round of customer interviews for 2020, our team received some interesting feedback which we’ve taken on board and used to iterate our product and service delivery. Innovation In general, our customers scored us 7.67/10 for innovation and found the platform ‘handy and innovative’, noting that the platform is ‘constantly evolving and improving’. Some of our customers felt that the recording workflow on Echocast could be improved and we’ve taken that to heart! A useful suggestion on Smashboard was for a preview of the message to appear when hovering over it. Our dev team determined that this would be a quick (and delightful!) user experience improvement, and have already implemented this functionality to Smashboard. To view all our recent updates, check out our Release log. Adding Value to our Customers Our customers scored us 8.5/10 in terms of how well the platform meets their needs, and 83% of customers surveyed felt that the platform had contributed to improving their teams’ workflows. In specific, one customer mentioned the fact that the ability to remotely access Fabrik’s web-based applications was very useful, and our Metrics data visualisation and reporting tool was specifically mentioned as a feature that makes it much easier to provide post-campaign reporting to clients after app-driven campaigns. Support Our Customer Success team have been working intently to provide our customers with exceptional customer support. We are elated that, in general, our customers are extremely satisfied with the way in which we support them and their app members, scoring us 9.33/10 on our Support provision. Communication In terms of the frequency and quality of our communication, all of the customers surveyed feel satisfied with our current routines around communication. One customer mentioned that they would like to see content in the monthly Fabrik Features Update that is more relevant to their professional services business, so we will be implementing a new monthly newsletter for our PAL communities from February onwards. Propensity for Digital Change Within the survey, we also wanted to gauge our customers' perceptions about their organisations’ own ability to implement digital change and transformation. In general our customers gave their businesses a confidence rating of 7.87/10 in their ability to implement digital change and transformation in their organisations. This is a 10% increase from the previous round of surveys, denoting an improvement which we hope is due to our more robust Customer Success engagement and workshops! Whilst they are eager to embrace change within their organisations, some customers felt that they were limited in terms of time and resources which stopped them from achieving what they would have liked to in the last quarter. While our surveys and interviews are scheduled every three months, you are always welcome to send us any feedback you might have. And as always, we would love to hear of features or tweaks that would make Fabrik more useful for you and your team.

Among the first parts of Fabrik to be shipped more than 10 years ago, Echocast was created to address a few key challenges in the Radio industry that unfortunately persist even today: the inability of the on-air team to capture on-air moments live; the inability to create and publish podcasts in real time without having to rely on workflows that were too time-consuming or technical; and the lack of quick and easy access to the broadcast programme archive to retrieve pieces of audio for advertisers or compliance. Echocast has since evolved to the point where it has become a vital content management, archival and compliance tool used extensively across our base of media customers. Radio Programming teams use it to capture snippets of audio that they'd like to make available for listening beyond the live moment, as well as to record and store useful content they may need to access later. Content and Production teams use it for publishing and managing on-demand content (either live or immediately after the moment) to the website, mobile app and social media channels. Promotions and Marketing teams use it to publish featured audio content as part of station promotions and campaigns. Technical teams use it for compliance and audit purposes by downloading any audio from Fabrik's cloud archive. As our Media customers across various departments become more reliant on creating and distributing podcasts, we receive feedback every so often about how the live recording and podcast publishing workflows can be improved. Taking into account our customer feedback, Echocast has received a few updates over the last month to enhance existing functionality and add some new features. Here's what you can expect to find in the latest update: Skip & Return to add Podcast Metadata The workflow of real-time recordings has been improved, providing more options and flexibility upon stopping, saving and publishing the recording. This means that, if you're short on time, you'll be able to skip the capturing of required metadata, and return to complete and publish your podcast at a later time. New 'Publish none' Category Setting It is now possible to set a Category's publish setting to either All, Latest or None. This setting impacts what is shown in your public feeds on your website or app, and all recordings, regardless of this configuration, will still be available in your Echocast admin view. While 'All' is the default, 'Publish latest' is useful for frequent, repetitive recordings (such as News, Sport or Weather) for which your listeners might only be interested in the latest recording in that category. When configuring your Category as 'Publish latest', the previous recordings available in your public feeds will be automatically unpublished whenever a new podcast is published to that category. The 'Publish none' setting is useful for podcasts that are required for archival or proof-of-execution purposes, but not necessarily for publishing to your general consumer. This setting is perfect for sponsored audio content such as live-reads or competition moments that must be captured for business purposes but may not be compelling on-demand listening for your audience. And, when used in conjunction with a Preset associated to this Category, 'Publish none' enables a streamlined and consistent recording workflow for your presenters/producers of content. Increased live-stream buffer One of the most important components of Fabrik for our broadcast customers is the digital live stream, which enables your live radio broadcast to be transmitted via your mobile app and website. The way the app or website transmits the live broadcast is that it loads small sections one after the other into the app to make sure that any breaks in connectivity or interruptions to the stream are sufficiently buffered, providing time for the stream to recover from any unexpected interruptions. In order to make your live stream even more resilient to network interruptions, the duration of that buffer has been extended to allow for a better experience when your listener's connectivity is strained, thereby reducing the likelihood of interruptions to the stream. Increased time tolerance of missing audio segments In the past, if there had been an interruption or break in the audio broadcast, Echocast would restrict the ability to request and retrieve a piece of the audio that had been interrupted. This was fairly limiting in terms of being able to retrieve audio from that section - a feature our Media customers require quite regularly. To ensure all audio (regardless of interruptions) is accessible to those requesting it, this restriction has now been adjusted and is more tolerant to periods of missing audio. Once having downloaded that audio snippet from the archive, you can then go ahead and edit or manipulate the audio as you see fit. Reworked Architecture Echocast was initially engineered to solve a few key challenges in the Radio industry more than a decade ago! Since then, Echocast has undergone a number of iterations, and different parts of the application have been worked on and improved at different times. Although the application had been maintained consistently over the years, it had come to a point where some of the back-end code and architecture had grown outdated and required quite a bit of work and time to bring it up to date. After this update, you should find that the Echocast application loads and processes your audio more quickly, and that podcast recording, audio archive requests and manual uploads are more reliable and speedy. Bug Fixes Preset Recordings Recordings configured with a Preset were occasionally affected when the Pause/Resume recording functionality was used. The result was that, when the recording was resumed, the assigned Preset would be automatically and incorrectly cancelled and erroneously saved to the General Preset. Now that this bug has been addressed, recordings categorised with a Preset will record, pause, resume and publish as expected. More Informative Error Notices In the past, when an audio archive request or a podcast recording failed, a generic email would be sent to the administrator notifying them of the failure. The email notification is now more useful, containing more information around the error. In addition, the way technical issues are logged to our Support team has been improved so that we receive more information regarding the issue, allowing our team to be more proactive when diagnosing issues and/or failures. Content Type Validation on Audio Upload Additional validation has been added to the audio upload functionality so that invalid content types are flagged before the podcast goes into a Processing state. Assigning Podcasts to a Blank Category A bug that caused podcasts to be assigned to a blank Category has been fixed. Further Info Watch our webinar about Echocast's podcasting and content management capabilities.

South Africa: Durban-based tech company, immedia has invested R10-million to help African media entrepreneurs to build sustainable community radio by using Fabrik, a set of cloud-enabled digital tools. Read more

“It has been crazy,” says Tamie Mbombo with a huge grin. “You guys have put us way ahead in a race our competitors didn’t even know was being run in the first place!” Tamie is the head of Marketing and PR at Izwi LoMzansi, more commonly known as the Voice of South Africa, a community radio station broadcasting from the bustling Durban Station Complex, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. The fast-paced madness has been crazy good for Mr Mbombo, and it all centres around engagement with his 278 000 listeners, people who tune in from as far afield as Port Edward in the South and Empangeni in the north. More specifically, in the case of this story, it relates to Izwi LoMzanzi’s direct engagement with over 20 000 of those listeners who have downloaded the station’s app on their smartphones. For one thing, it means they are no longer reliant on the terrestrial radio signal to listen to their favourite radio station and they now have a whole new platform to interact directly with presenters and advertisers. The app was developed on the Fabrik platform, a product of Durban based technology company immedia that is at the forefront of digital innovation, revolutionizing communication for broadcasters and community organisations. The software platform, which has been licenced by African radio stations since 2016 and is now in use by nearly 300,000 people across the globe, boasts a host of unique features that reimagines revenue for the radio industry. Jonathan Lumley, Fabrik’s head of Clients, Channels & Markets has been part of the team working with Tamie on Izwi LoMzansi’s digital journey. “Tamie has made some huge strides in upselling Izwi’s on air clients onto the app – having already sold a large amount of inventory to cell phone companies and big retailers to monetise its audience.” An example of an opening billboard in Izwi’s app Jonathan adds that Tamie has led the digital charge with featured podcasts and integrated advertising campaigns. “The impact of ‘change agents’ that drive digital transformation from within a station is crucial. Tamie has embraced the possibilities of this new revenue stream by providing relevant app-based campaigns which enhance the experience for Izwi listeners.” Tamie says that the app has made his job that much easier, dramatically improving the station’s listener data. “When our listeners download the app, they put in their age and other relevant data, so we know specifically what they want. That is gold. Fabrik has helped us prepare for the future.” While total privacy is consistently maintained between members who engage in public channels, individuals are given the option to share demographic information with the station – resulting in aggregated data that is then used to conceptualise campaigns that are ‘on the money’ for their advertisers. Tamie cites one of the recent app campaigns as an example. Called “#PimpMyBiz”, it involved entrepreneurs pitching their business idea to listeners in a voice note. In total 45 000 votes were received for the entrepreneurs that audience members rated as most likely to succeed. Calls-to-action alerted app members to the competition, and voters could send a hashtagged voice-note to the Izwi Studio. The five finalists in the competition won training and a suite of products and assistance to bootstrap their businesses. “This is the sort of engagement that is meaningful to our listeners and it helps advertisers direct their spend very specifically. Fabrik has brought us to the front of the starting line, in a race many are unaware is even being run.”

A look at how YFM received over 1 million competition entries during a global pandemic, and what the station did differently during lockdown to cater for its young market over that period. Since March 2020, radio programming in South Africa has been dominated by all things Covid-19, and many broadcasting platforms found themselves having to pivot rapidly to keep their audiences engaged with topical information during a time of global uncertainty. From daily statistics to coverage on government’s ongoing response, and from features on precautionary measures to advice on how to keep yourself occupied - all media was Corona-media. However, YFM's approach to their Youth Month campaign was strikingly different. As the country prepared to enter a nationwide lockdown amid the anxiety and fear of a global pandemic, YFM - a commercial youth radio station based in Gauteng - set out to run their ambitious audience engagement campaign known as 100Racks, which promised listeners a total of R100 000 in prize money. Over the prior four years, the station had been using Fabrik to build, grow and engage their audience. YFM had run versions of this campaign twice before with different executions as part of a broader strategic objective for the station to educate and connect with their most loyal audience, and to sustain that engagement over time. This time round, Fabrik's audience engagement functionality combined with powerful real-time insights provided the backdrop to execute an integrated campaign of this magnitude. Where it began YFM started this particular journey in August 2019 with their 992Racks campaign, which spanned 10 days and gave away R99,200 in total prize-money during The Best Drive, DJ Sabby's afternoon drive-time show. The motivation behind the first implementation of 992Racks was to familiarise the audience with how a campaign of this nature works. YFM hadn't executed a campaign in this way in quite some time, so it was vital to get both their audience familiar with how these executions would work and to trial different executions with their on-air talent. YFM levels up Fast-forward to the weeks leading up to the first Covid-19 lockdown in South Africa, and the general mood in the country and the province was one of fear and anxiety. What the station knew at the time was that a fundamental shift in radio engagement and consumption would occur during lockdown and that it would be important for them to connect even more deeply with their most engaged audience. "As we headed into lockdown, we knew that listening habits would, would change fundamentally, and it was important for us to take our most engaged audience and to grow the size of that audience and to take them into lockdown with us." Hilton Tarrant, Digital Manager at YFM It was primarily for this reason that they elected to run the campaign again, but this time known as '100Racks' - based on the R100 000 available prize money, of which the purpose was twofold: To educate a data-sensitive audience about the app's data consumption and live-streaming efficiencies, which are particularly low as the app has been specifically developed and is constantly optimised for as minimal data usage as possible. To derive certain key insights on audience demographics and usage on an opt-in basis, taking advantage of the app's member registration capabilities - which was a pre-requisite for entry. The insights derived from this week-long campaign were indeed powerful, and a significant spike in new app registrations was observed during the duration of the campaign. 100Racks 3.0 After gauging the significant impact and response of their audience to the prior 100Racks campaigns, YFM chose to run the third and most recent iteration during Youth Month in June 2020, at a time when it was particularly important for the station, who have a predominantly youth audience, to be active and engaging even more deeply with their most loyal audience. The station considered this particular campaign an opportunity to ramp up their previous efforts, and bring together multiple teams across the station (including Marketing, Programming, Creative Solutions, Sales, and Research) to collaborate in finding ways to bring a message of positivity and hope through the campaign to the country's youth during a time when it was sorely needed. This time, the campaign ran throughout the day from 5am to 10pm, with different executions, variations and tactics, giving away R2000 prize money in each show to a total of R100 000, and providing 48 unique opportunities to win over the two-week period. The entry mechanic was once again very simple. Entrants were asked to listen out for a unique keyword given per show, and to message in the keyword to the station as soon as they heard it. Results of the campaign The response to the campaign was mind-blowing and by the end of the two-week period, the station had received over 1.1million competition entries. Hear from YFM's Digital Manager Hilton Tarrant about results of the campaign: During the two weeks, YFM's live-streaming engagement doubled. App engagement also experienced a significant uplift, increasing by 70% during the campaign. During the month of June, app downloads increased by 100% compared to the previous monthly average. Crucially, the station also noted that listeners were accessing the stream more often during the day, and for longer periods of time, which was visible in audio streaming data from the app, website and third-party streaming aggregators, indicating a structural shift to retained listenership throughout the day for the duration of the campaign. As shown in the above graph, the total daily live streaming sessions were higher, and engagement is more sustained throughout the course of the day. Fabrik redefines the integrated campaign Throughout the course of the three campaigns, YFM made use of a broad array of Fabrik functionality to engage with listeners, monitor that engagement in real time, select winners and gain insights into the campaign as a whole. YFM's mobile app was a key component in the execution of the campaign, and the messaging and profiling capabilities within the app were used to enter the competition and derive key campaign insights. Fabrik's audience engagement dashboard was used to track campaign entries, select winners and monitor audience engagement. During each campaign, a key application feature, the Campaign Manager was used to monitor engagement on each specific keyword, and monitor audience interaction during each show. Fabrik's Metrics dashboard illuminates key audience engagement insights over time, which the station observed to monitor stats and analytics in real time as well as gain a consolidated overview of all audience engagement throughout the campaign. YFM's commitment to their audience draws them ever closer Fabrik provides a space beyond the normal social media channels for your most loyal, most engaged audience to find you, connect with you and grow with you. It also provides you with the tools you need to be of service to your community and engage with them in the most meaningful way. YFM's commitment to doing just that and their strategic vision gave both the station and their audience resilience during a very difficult time, and has resulted in a sustained increase in their app and live-streaming engagement in the months since then. Watch our recent webinar on the 100Racks campaign to find out more.

How ready is your business for digital transformation? If your answer is 'not very', the data shows that you're not alone. Read more

How ready is your business for digital transformation? If your answer is “not very”, the data shows that you’re not alone. That’s the answer we received from a surprising number of our clients we canvassed in a recent survey. We got a similar response when we polled our audience during a recent webinar on 'Radio's Digital Transformation in a Data-Driven Age'. Watch the webinar: https://youtu.be/kmusgBFh5ys I say “surprising” because you’d expect companies in the media and broadcasting space to be ahead of the digital curve. While many undoubtedly are, particularly those who have adopted digital tools such as Fabrik, quite a few others aren’t as ready for digital transformation as they might need to be. If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that momentous change is not only inevitable, it’s upon us, whether we’re ready or not. While we were all busy drawing up our ‘Digital Transformation’ strategies and debating the definition of “4IR”, Covid came along and thrust everyone off a cliff into a digital sea. Whether your company sinks or swims may depend on how quickly and adeptly you adapt to a new reality, one where formerly fringe concepts like WFH (work from home) have entered the business mainstream and niche products like Zoom have become verbs – much as Google and Skype did for an earlier generation of netizens. The good news is that there are three practical things you can do starting today that will help ensure your success in this regard. While the experience I draw on is largely in technology and broadcasting, these three principles are relevant for decision makers in most industries who find themselves confronting the reality of digital transformation. 1. Look within It may not always be apparent, but most members of your organisation can help point the way to your digital transformation priorities. The younger people are more obviously digitally savvy, having grown up in a world of smartphones, memes and connectivity. But don’t discount your older team members. They’ve already lived through the arrival of - and in many cases helped usher into their workspaces – tech like fax machines, the internet, email and voice conferencing, long before the arrival of instant messaging and video calls. They bring a wealth of institutional knowledge and expertise as well as solid values and ethics to any discussions around your company’s digital transformation journey, all of which can be the perfect counterpoint to their younger colleagues’ enthusiasm, energy and comfort with cutting edge tech and the latest trends. This may mean looking at your people through new eyes, employing a collaborative process, and being receptive to ideas from unexpected quarters. But if you’re open to allowing discourse, debate and conversation, looking within will help you find the seeds of change - and maybe also the agents of that change - inside your own organisation. 2. Look without While change starts from within, looking outwards can take its positive effects to an entirely new level. Internal collaboration unlocks the potential of your own team, but external collaboration can unleash the power of the entire supply chain. To get started, identify at least one external partner – perhaps a supplier or even a key customer or a loyal advertiser – who would be prepared to take this digital journey of discovery with you. Try looking at your supply chain in an entirely new way and identifying individual links as potential partners. Digital transformation is a convergence problem and the more partners you have in this journey, the more perspective you can collectively bring to solving problems. Taking this path requires courage and will push you well out of your comfort zone. It will require a leap of faith and trust in your prospective partners. But the rewards are worth it. 3. Adopt a culture of change If it wasn’t already apparent, 2020 has driven home the fact that change isn’t a once off, but a continuous, often disconcerting, reality of life. To survive and thrive in this state of constant flux, you will need to adapt your internal culture and structure to embrace change and encourage it within your organisation. This may involve re-examining the metrics you currently use to measure progress, productivity and other organisational priorities. You’ll need to ask yourself, “Do the things we measure encourage change or do they entrench established practices that may be at odds with change?” As important as being agile and responsive to change is finding consensus as an organisation on what constitutes good change. Chaos is change, but you want to avoid that. Throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing what sticks is not meaningful change. Nor is change for change’s sake. Yes, the prospect of transformation can be daunting. But doing nothing simply leaves you vulnerable to unwanted and unexpected changes you haven’t planned for. So, tap into the insights, energy and experience of your own staff and external stakeholders, then have a robust conversation on what kind of change you want. If our own experience and that of our partners is anything to go on, this will get you out of the starting blocks and further along the path to sustainable digital transformation than many, maybe all, of your competitors. In a recent webinar on digital transformation in the Radio industry, Anice delves into the subject in a lot more detail, as well as discussing issues like customer privacy and opportunities for real-time rich data in metrics. “You are not flying blind. That’s the digital transformation - it makes reality a lot more accountable.”