5 Social Media Goals Every Radio Station Should Set

Are you training your audience to follow your station—or just follow Facebook? Today, we have 5 social media goals to ensure social media is working for you instead of against you.  For some stations, they place a greater emphasis on social media than on their website.  Agreeably, social media is important, but your station website should always be the home base where everything connects.  Facebook, Instagram and X are not going to write your station a check for social media followers.

Radio’s 5 Social Media Goals

So, let’s delve into these five social media goals and how they should be applied to your station.

1. Provide Better Customer Service

For businesses, this typically involves responding to customer inquiries. For us in radio, it’s answering listener questions.

Your audience is asking things like:

• “Who was that artist you just played?”
• “Where can I get tickets for the show you mentioned?”
• “How do I enter that contest again?”

If you only rely on Facebook comments or DMs, you’re missing a chance to own the conversation. Direct listeners to your website, where you can provide FAQs, contest rules, playlists, and contact forms. That way, your social media is the door, but your website is the lobby where they get the real answers.

2. Increase Brand Awareness

Radio has always been about brand—whether it’s being the #1 station for new country or the go-to place for local news. Social media is a tool that can help you spread the word, but your website reinforces it with consistency.

Think about it: On-air, you might say, “Check us out on Facebook.” But what if tomorrow Facebook changes their algorithm and your posts now reach less of your followers than it already does? Ouch.

Instead, use social to drive people to your website, where you control the brand experience 100%. That’s where your logo, your colors, your imaging, your stream, and your content all live in one place. That’s where listeners really get to know your station.

And it’s where your advertisers are!  When you increase your brand awareness, you’re giving them more eyes on the ads they place with you.

3. Drive Appointments

Social media is a great way for your audience to see place your messages in front of the people who will most want to see it.  You can use that for appointment setting.

Here are a few examples:

• “Be listening at 9 AM for your chance to win XYZ concert tickets.”
• “Register right now on our website for the weekend getaway giveaway.”
• “Here are 5 reasons why it pays to sign up for our newsletter.”

Every one of those should point back to your website. Social media posts create the urgency, but your site is where they actually enter, sign up, or get details. Plus, every registration grows your email list or your database, which you fully control—not Facebook’s.

4. Build a Community

Social media is great for community interaction, but a community built on your website keeps people coming back.

Imagine having a local events calendar, a listener photo gallery, or even a prayer wall where your community can share encouragement. These kinds of features not only live on your website, but they make your listeners feel like they’re part of something bigger than just tuning in.

And the bonus? When advertisers see that your site has traffic and engagement, that community is worth money. It shows your station is a trusted hub—not just on the air but online too.

5. Drive Website Traffic

This one’s the most obvious, but it’s also the most important: everything on social should lead back to your website.

Posting “Happy Friday!” with a random meme might get some likes, but it doesn’t bring people to where you can control the relationship. Instead, post things like:

• “Here are 5 things happening this weekend in town—click for the full list.”
• “See our exclusive interview with [local artist]—watch now on the website.”
• “Enter our contest before midnight tonight at [stationname].com.”

Think of social media as the fishing pole and your website is the boat where you actually reel them in.

How Many People Actually See Your Posts?

I did an AI search for the prompt, “If have 50,000 Facebook followers, how many of them actually see my post?” Here’s what it said.

For a Facebook page with 50,000 followers, the average organic reach is only 1.5% to 2.5%, meaning around 750 to 1,250 followers will see any single post. The exact number can vary significantly depending on factors like engagement, content format, and the ever-changing Facebook algorithm.

Factors that influence post reach

The percentage of followers who see your posts is not guaranteed and can fluctuate based on several factors controlled by Facebook’s algorithm:

• Engagement: The algorithm favors posts that receive meaningful interactions, such as comments, shares, and reactions. The more engagement a post gets shortly after being published, the more people Facebook will show it to.
• Content format: Posts with native videos (uploaded directly to Facebook) and Facebook Reels tend to have higher visibility than posts with external links, which the platform typically demotes.
• Trust score: Facebook maintains an internal “trust score” for every page based on its history of generating quality, authentic engagement. Pages with higher trust scores receive preferential treatment from the algorithm, giving their posts a bigger initial audience.
• Post recency: The algorithm prioritizes newer content. A post’s visibility will naturally decline over time unless it continues to receive new engagement.
• Audience preferences: The algorithm learns each user’s preferences over time and prioritizes content it predicts they will find valuable and interact with.

Strategies to increase your reach

To maximize the number of followers who see your content, you can focus on building authentic engagement:

• Create high-quality content. Produce posts that your audience will find valuable, entertaining, or informative.
• Post at optimal times. Use your Meta Business Suite insights to determine when your audience is most active and schedule posts for those times.
• Encourage discussion. Ask questions and create content that encourages followers to share their opinions and experiences in the comments.
• Engage with your community. When followers comment on your posts, respond to them to foster a more active community. This signals to Facebook that your content is valuable.
• Use Facebook Groups. Creating or participating in a relevant Facebook Group can help increase reach, as posts in groups often get more visibility than posts on a business page.
• Use paid advertising. The most direct way to ensure your posts reach a larger audience is by boosting them with paid ads.

Wrapping It Up

The bottom line is that social media is important, but remember: you don’t own it. You’re renting space on someone else’s platform. We’ve seen many stations get kicked off Youtube, Facebook and X.  Your website and mobile app are the only places you truly control the content, the audience relationship, and the revenue opportunities.

So, when you set your social media goals, always ask: How does this connect back to platforms we own like our signal and our station website?

That’s how you provide better service, strengthen your brand, grow appointment listening, build community, and—most importantly—turn likes and shares into loyal listeners and real revenue.