JON MILLER  |  Director of Programming Services

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In just the last seven years we’ve seen the launch of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

That’s a lot of change.

Yet the building blocks for being a successful communicator in any medium remain consistent.

At Arbitron we call these building blocks Cume and Time Spent Listening. For social media, it’s called audience and engagement. New terms, new platforms—similar formula.

Cume (or “Audience”) is the number of different people listening to your station, or in the case of social media, the number of people checking out your Facebook posts or following your tweets.

Radio stations build their Cume by convincing new listeners in the market to sample their station. In social media you build audience by finding new people to “like” your page, follow your tweets, or subscribe to your channel.

Regardless of the platform, this is generally a function of marketing.

Time Spent Listening (or “Engagement” in the social media world) is the amount of time or attention your audience spends on your product. You build this number by consistently generating reasons to stick around.

Regardless of the platform, this is generally a function of compelling and unique content.

The real beauty of this analogy is that it works both ways.

If you are a broadcaster who is working to understand and define success for your station’s social media efforts, just think in terms of building Cume and TSL like you do with your broadcast content.

If you are responsible for creating social media content such as a Facebook page, blog, YouTube channel, or Twitter account, replace “Cume” or “Time Spent Listening” with “Audience” and “Engagement,” and things will start to click.

Jon Miller is the Director of Programming Services at Arbitron and can be reached at jon.miller@arbitron.com.