All India Radio, also known as Akashvani – ‘voice of the sky’, is the official national public radio broadcaster of India. Reaching out to a population of 1.2 billion people through 416 radio stations, it is one of the largest media organizations in the world. The 262 broadcasting Centers spread across the length and breadth of the country reach out to 99.18% of the Indian population spread over about 91.85% of the national area.
The advent of new technology and digital media has taken people off radio as a means of entertainment and information. Competition from TV and online news resources as well as private radio stations operated locally was also proving to be a challenge. Under such circumstances, there was a need to raise awareness about the authentic AIR programs that have had a long-standing history as well as new programs being delivered through constant upgradation of technology. The aim was to increase the number of people following these programs. We used Social Media channels to reach people spread across Kashmir to Kanyakumari, even remote areas like Siachen in the north. The other target area was Tamil Nadu in the south.
AIR broadcasts programs in 21 major languages in its home services. We started by understanding the complex structure and scheduling of the shows aired on All India Radio. Then we recognized and defined the ideal listener profile and started targeting them on Social Media. There were some old videos that we started uploading on YouTube building a strong connection with the audience. We worked to boost the reach of all existing primary channels including Vividh Bharati, FM Rainbow(102.6 in New Delhi), FM Gold(100.7), FM Radio Gold (106.4) in major metros, state of Tamil Nadu, Kashmir(Radio Kashmir) and other parts of the country.
We posted on average 8 to 9 posts on Facebook each day. The focus primarily was on youth. The idea was to re-connect them with the novelty of radio, the emotion it evoked for the past generations, and pass on this legacy to them. We analyzed and found that interaction on the posts peaked between 6 and 11 pm. We thereby rescheduled most of the posts between 6 and 11 pm ensuring that we reached our target audience at the right time.
We started working the very first month. The average number of visits per day increased to 25. This was proof that we were successful at increasing awareness through Facebook. On average there were 20 on-page reviews. We further started blogging and streamlined AIR's themes and layouts, thereby getting the following results.
